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Efficiency Of Fluorescent Tubes

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Fluorescent tubes can range in efficiency from about 16 lumens per watt for a 4 watt tube using an ordinary magnetic ballast, to about 95 lumens per watt for a 32 watt tube using a modern electronic ballast.

Most commonly, fluorescent tube average out at 50-67 lumens per watt overall. This is compared to 10-20 lumens per watt for a normal household incandescent bulb.

Almost all of the power consumed by an incandescent light bulb is emitted as heat as opposed to visible light, in fact only 5-9% of the energy actually gets converted into light.

Incandescent lamps can be replaced by compact fluorescent bulbs which have an efficiency of up to 15% and achieve about 60 lumens per watt.

Due to the degradation of the phosphor as they age, the average brightness of the fluorescent lamp will be about 10% less over the entire service life.