anyone think this bulb stands any chance at all or making reflector similar with a bankof low energy lightbulbs
http://www.greenshorticulture.co.uk/CFL-Li...-System-800.asp

Can it be done? Sure. Will it work well? No.

CFLs are generally lower wattage, so you have fewer lumens right off the bat. Then there's the size of the light soure, which is relatively large. It's near impossible to gather what light you get to the triplet, so you lose efficiency there.

CFLs are actually lower lumen/watt than MH lamps, so even though they're "high efficiency" that's only relative to incandescent lamps. They're less efficient than MH lamps. A 100W MH lamp will produce more light than 100W of flourescnt, which will produce more light than a 100W halogen, which will in turn produce more light than a 100W incandescent.

This is in the FAQ, by the way.

So can you do it? Sure you can. I believe that someone even did so, but I don't think that they got very good results.

thanks for the reply supraguy i just thought a few of these cfls about 5inch behind the lcd might work oh well back to the drawing board what i have at the moment is a 250 watt overhead halogen but dont want to use it because of the huge heat issue they have is there any way the heat could be kept down on these lamps and are they bright enough in a darkened room