Hi folks, would like to give my results on ignition coil powered cfl's. I am using 555 timer at 4.8khz,50/50 duty, 100micro sec. rise & fall. driving single ign. coil at 12V. routing collapsing field of primary of ign. coil to an 11W Incand. bulb w/ 330uf,200V cap in parallel to bulb. have 3 different cfl's, a 23W, 32W, 13W. the light output of the 23W I would liken to a 25W incand. running at 1/2 brightness or a lil more. and draws 380 milliamps while the 11W incand. bulb at back end is maybe illuminated to 1W or a lil more. however things get interesting as i add the 2nd 32W cfl in series, amp draw drops to 320 milliamps and in my opinion light output is increased to maybe twice. from what i can see each bulb has not diminished in brightness at least i cant detect it with my eyes. when hooking up 3rd smaller bulb also in series light output in basement again is increased. im not sure if this is just spreading out the light better giving the illusion of more light but my eyes cant detect a decrease in each bulbs light intensity and w/ 3rd bulb attached amp draw drops to 280 milliamps. although i think identical bulbs would work better in series like this. Also i did try using a normal car inverter comparing a 60w incand. to 3 in series and in that case yes each is diminished in light output spreading it out through the 3 bulbs but the ignition coil cfl tests are not that way at all. So to me it's looking like if we start with a higher power input to give more real life light outputs then string a bunch of these in series like Bodkins is showing it seems similar to what Joseph Newman is saying, that our input is a catalyst and the copper atoms or in this case the gas and coatings inside the bulb are being converted into light and when using more bulbs or more gas and such we use ever progressively lower inputs and should have more light than we started with at much lower input. And along those lines why wouldn't thick nichrome wire coils in series produce the same heat as one coil would, or more who knows, for lower and lower input. although in this case with these cfl's i would be expecting each light to diminish in light and they don't seem to be, very strange.

Peace, Love, Light