CFL: Advertised spec versus reality

We bought a bunch of "Kill-a-watt" instruments to measure up to 8 parameters of electricity going into appliances. So one of the first things we do is to measure the real power consumption of the CFL used in the lab. Relevant data:

Power consumption: 17 watts (advertised 13 watts)
Power factor: 0.60
Measured VA (Product of actual input current and voltage) 26 volt-amp

Thus hundreds of millions of CFLs out there are costing the power plants twice the current as advertised. And when the power companies install digital power meters, the consumer will be paying for the VA consumption and not the real watts read by the current old-fashion power meters.

And remember that more than half the light flux from a CFL goes into the shade surrounding it. And they contain mercury. I personally was an early adopter of CFLs back when they looked like a long U. Many of them have failed and taking them to the right disposal site is a pain, so they just form my collection of dead CFLs waiting for surgery, i.e. someday I'll try to fix them. After all, the fluorescent element is perfectly recyclable. It's the inverter (the electronics that transform rectified AC into high-frequency current to feed the fluorescent tube) that fails, most likely due to a capacitor that is the weakest element in the whole assembly.

CFLs have saved us a bundle over the last 15 years. But we went through quite a few of them. LED-based light bulbs won't have any disposal problem and last virtually forever in a home. We do use a cheap LED bulb purchased at Costco as night light to see how long it will last (we wrote the date of purchase on it) with 8 hours of operation every day. That one can't be used for reading due to its 100-lumen output.