Inside a compact fluoro, you have some electronics that do useful things like make the globe work.
Now much like the electronic ballasts in moving lights, these get unhappy when you don't feed them clean power. Dimming works is one of two ways, leading or trailing edge. In leading edge dimming, the dimmer works by sensing when the voltage crosses zero and then waiting until the relevant portion of the rotation has been completed. So at 50%, assuming a linear dimming curve, when the waveform reaches 90 degrees, the triac or SCR will fires and turn on. Then when it gets to 180 degrees it crosses zero again and the process repeats. In trailing edge dimming, at zero, the triac turns on and then once as much of the waveform has passed as one wants, it turns off. When the triac switches, instead of having a nice sine curve, you get a vertical line at the switching point to zero.
Now the problem with this is that when you tell it sit at 100% it doesn't quite. What happens is that there is a small delay between when the zero crossing detector triggers and when the triac turns on and so
you still lose part of the sine curve. They also normally don't quite turn off.
So the electronics inside movers and CFLs don't like these straight lines, they like nice sine curves (transformers are somewhat similar for other reasons). Feed enough chopped waveform into electronics and they get feed up with not getting what they work on and kick the bucket. When they do this, they are liable to leave short circuit or other unpleasantness across the supply which then travels back to the dimmer and potentially cooks the output device.
The second way that your CFL might be killing the dimmer is something called harmonics. As a byproduct of the switchmode power supplies in CFLs as well a vast array of other things these days, you get electrical noise introduced back up the power lines at 2x, 3x, 4x, etc the supply frequency as well as at the switching frequency of the given switchmode. These can be really nasty to your dimmer as it's designed to run at 50 (60) Hz and particularly the output choke that is there to smooth some of the dimming artefacts mentioned above has an increasing impedance with frequency and so can get unhappy.
Bottom line, your compact fluoros won't be happy and they may cause collateral damage to your dimmer...
The caveat... Sine wave and possibly IGBT dimming. These more technologically advanced and hence more expensive forms of dimming don't produce the same amount of artefacts. I don't know too much about IGBTs, but sine wave dimming could theoretically dim compact fluroros except for the small issue of not having enough internal voltage to actually ionise the gas inside... Might be possible but all would be well advised to consult someone more knowledgeable on same before trying...
Now much like the electronic ballasts in moving lights, these get unhappy when you don't feed them clean power. Dimming works is one of two ways, leading or trailing edge. In leading edge dimming, the dimmer works by sensing when the voltage crosses zero and then waiting until the relevant portion of the rotation has been completed. So at 50%, assuming a linear dimming curve, when the waveform reaches 90 degrees, the triac or SCR will fires and turn on. Then when it gets to 180 degrees it crosses zero again and the process repeats. In trailing edge dimming, at zero, the triac turns on and then once as much of the waveform has passed as one wants, it turns off. When the triac switches, instead of having a nice sine curve, you get a vertical line at the switching point to zero.
Now the problem with this is that when you tell it sit at 100% it doesn't quite. What happens is that there is a small delay between when the zero crossing detector triggers and when the triac turns on and so
you still lose part of the sine curve. They also normally don't quite turn off.
So the electronics inside movers and CFLs don't like these straight lines, they like nice sine curves (transformers are somewhat similar for other reasons). Feed enough chopped waveform into electronics and they get feed up with not getting what they work on and kick the bucket. When they do this, they are liable to leave short circuit or other unpleasantness across the supply which then travels back to the dimmer and potentially cooks the output device.
The second way that your CFL might be killing the dimmer is something called harmonics. As a byproduct of the switchmode power supplies in CFLs as well a vast array of other things these days, you get electrical noise introduced back up the power lines at 2x, 3x, 4x, etc the supply frequency as well as at the switching frequency of the given switchmode. These can be really nasty to your dimmer as it's designed to run at 50 (60) Hz and particularly the output choke that is there to smooth some of the dimming artefacts mentioned above has an increasing impedance with frequency and so can get unhappy.
Bottom line, your compact fluoros won't be happy and they may cause collateral damage to your dimmer...
The caveat... Sine wave and possibly IGBT dimming. These more technologically advanced and hence more expensive forms of dimming don't produce the same amount of artefacts. I don't know too much about IGBTs, but sine wave dimming could theoretically dim compact fluroros except for the small issue of not having enough internal voltage to actually ionise the gas inside... Might be possible but all would be well advised to consult someone more knowledgeable on same before trying...