Whoa!! Would you look at that!! There are parts galore inside these energy saving bulbs. Who knew? This little tidbit is not really a repair tip but a "how to" on getting some spare parts.

If you are any thing like myself, if it is electronic and it's broke, we either fix it or dig into it for spare parts. I even have the word out to all of the neighbors to not toss out any unwanted electronic items.

Anyways and getting back to the topic on hand, the picture shows a trick that is not yet very well known for picking up a few spare parts. Simply and carefully(glass) take apart any of the "green" bulbs that happen to burn out. Inside there are a number of capacitors, diodes, transistors, resistors and a small transformer among other things. I use a Hakko 808 desoldering gun and can have the components off the board in just a couple of minutes. From there, I separate them and put each one in the appropriate parts container for later use.

Now, besides picking up a few extra parts from an unknown source, you also know one of the reasons why these bulbs costs us what they do.

Do these bulbs create enough RFI to cause problems with radio amateurs?

Each lamp incorporates a DC power supply that in turn drives a pair of switching transistors that oscillate in the tens-of-kilohertz range. To be Energy Star compliant requires greater then or equal to 40kHz to produce the AC that powers the fluorescent lamp. Most households will have dozens of similar switching power supplies in use at any given time.  These tiny oscillators must comply with EMC regulations, which for the U.S. fall under FCC 47CFR Part 18 - Industrial, Scientific, and Medical Devices.  The FCC  rules limit the amount of RF voltage that can be radiated along the power line to 250 microvolts in the .45 to 30 MHz range.  That's not much power and under normal circumstances, will hardly ever be heard on our ham radios. Yet some radio amateurs have traced their noise problem directly to these bulbs. The cause of this noise could be due to faulty construction of the bulb or some other external factor yet to be explained.