Note that this has nothing to do with saving energy and everything to do with reducing wear on the bulb from on/off cycles.
> The operating life of CFLs is more affected by the number of times they are switched on and off. You can generally extend the life of a CFL bulb more by switching it on and off less frequently than if you simply use it less.
> In any case, the relatively higher "inrush" current required lasts for half a cycle, or 1/120th of a second. The amount of electricity consumed to supply the inrush current is equal to a few seconds or less of normal light operation. Turning off fluorescent lights for more than 5 seconds will save more energy than will be consumed in turning them back on again.
For this specific discussion about turning lights off while you blink, yes, you do actually burn more electricity in addition to wearing the bulb out if you're cycling it off for just 200ms.
But for real world use by normal people, turning off for 5 seconds will save energy, and turning it off for 15 minutes will save money.
In the real world people don't care if their CFLs burn out and get replaced with LEDs because CFLs are comparatively terrible and you can get a higher quality LED bulb for about $5.
True, I was just trying to explain this to my partner who didn’t want to throw out still functional CFLs. In this case the value of the estimated remaining life of the CFL + cost of new LED is less than the expected power savings of the LED.
I submit that there are vanishingly small number of individuals who would spend more on bulbs than what those bulbs would save in electric costs over their lifetime.
That's going to depend on the design of the bulb. If it's off for the length of a blink, it probably doesn't need to strike again. Or you could dim it to 10% for the duration instead of turning it off.
But the other factor is dealing with the delayed response of the phosphor. Can you actually turn the light output off and on fast enough?
