Phillip McBride, of Hope, looks at the options of compact fluorescent bulbs last month at Wal-Mart in Salina.

Salina ? Only slightly younger and less versatile than the knock-knock genre of jokes, the light bulb joke can be twisted (pun intended) to fit almost any circumstance.

So, how many pounds of coal does it take to run a light bulb?

Let’s look at a typical 100-watt bulb; if it’s on for four hours a day for a year, about 166 pounds of coal will be burned to keep it lit. Burning that coal will put about 300 pounds of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. And at four hours a day, it’ll last about a year before needing replaced.

But in just the past year or so, an alternative has started appearing on store shelves that promises to not only last five, six or more years but also to cut power consumption by 75 percent enough that a single compact fluorescent lamp could save $30, $40 or more in energy over its lifetime.

It’s that savings that was on Phillip McBride’s mind during a recent shopping trip to Wal-Mart.

He’d just installed four new ceiling fans in his home in Hope. He had several packages of 40-watt torch bulbs in his cart but paused in front of the “swirly” compact fluorescent lamps that just recently started taking up several feet of shelf space in the store.

He’d seen a display at the end of the aisle in the hardware section, which showed several common types of light bulbs alongside their fluorescent counterparts; he didn’t really want the “swirlies (compact fluorescents)” where they’d be seen in a ceiling fan but soon found compact fluorescents with a torch-shaped cover. “I’m just checking the equivalents,” he said, comparing the packages.

The fluorescents that put out the same light as the traditional 40-watt bulbs use just 7 watts. They do cost more upfront: the 3-packs of fluorescents were $9.97, while a 2-pack of incandescents were just $1.94.

That puts each compact fluorescent at $3.33, compared with 97 cents a piece for the incandescents, but with each fluorescent rated at 6,000 hours instead of 1,500 for the older model, McBride would replace that 97-cent bulb four times during the fluorescent’s lifespan. Add in the lower power consumption each compact fluorescent would use about $30 less electricity over its life than the four bulbs it’s replacing, and it makes sense to buy fluorescent.

“It’s money well-spent,” McBride said as he rehung the several packs of 40-watt bulbs and instead loaded up on compact fluorescents. “When you’ve got four kids, you’ve got to find ways to save money.”

Wal-Mart’s saving money

Of course, when you’ve got 3,000 stores, with 15 or so ceiling fans on display in each one, there’s quite a bit of money-saving potential there, too.

And so Wal-Mart this fall put out the word to its stores to install compact fluorescents in the ceiling fan displays. Salina store manager Ken Noonan recalls being at a managers’ meeting when the change was announced.

“I don’t remember how much they said we’d save as a company, but it was a lot, millions,” Noonan said. Outside analysts have estimated the company will save $6 million a year.

It’s also a way to show people compact fluorescents in action.

At about the same time as the ceiling fan swap, the nation’s largest retailer announced an ambitious goal: to sell 100 million compact fluorescent lamps to its customers in 2007.

Last year, Americans bought about 2 billion light bulbs; just 5 percent were compact fluorescents.

That’s a huge increase from 15 years ago, when compact fluorescents had about a 1 percent market share in the U.S. But for Wal-Mart to meet its goal, compact fluorescent sales will have to roughly double over last year. “A couple of years ago, we weren’t selling hardly any,” Noonan said. The amount of shelf space reflected that. Noonan said compact fluorescents, until recently, had just a few feet of valuable shelf space. That’s increased dramatically, and so have sales.

Noonan couldn’t disclose sales numbers but said the store’s computerized product ordering system, which places orders automatically based on each item’s sales history, had to be manually overridden several times recently as sales have increased.

The upward curve of sales can be attributed to several factors, Noonan said, with an obvious one being Wal-Mart making it a priority.

“As big as we are, we can influence trends,” he said. But other factors include an increase in selection – compact fluorescents now come in dozens of styles, including outdoor floodlights, yellow “bug” lights, indoor spotlights, and bulbs and torches that disguise the fluorescent tubes. The technology has improved in recent years, including a switch from magnetic to electronic ballasts; and just as with computers or cell phones, the advance of technology has led to lower prices.

Lighter bulbs

Fifteen years ago, compact fluorescents sold in the $15 to $25 range, and with the old technology were significantly heavier.

It was in that era that Chris Venicx proudly brought home his first compact fluorescent lamp, made by his employer, Philips Lighting in Salina.

He installed it in a kitchen light fixture, one with a mechanism that allowed the light to be moved up and down on its cord.

“It completely dropped down, so we couldn’t use it because it was so heavy,” said Venicx, the manager of the Salina Philips plant. “It completely touched the table.”

A June 2006 study by the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory put it this way: “Unfortunately, the early model CFLs were not quite ready for prime time, with a host of technical challenges including bulkiness, low light output and inconsistent performance, still to be worked out before they would be considered comparable to incandescents in any application.”

Today, compact fluorescents aren’t made at Salina’s Philips plant, but the company’s research and development is located there.

“New technology is always more expensive,” said Frank Latassa, director of fluorescent lamp development for Philips. “As you make them, you learn. And more volume lets you leverage your suppliers, as opposed to fairly limited production in the past.”