After a lot of searching I found a photoelectric controller rated to work with CFLs. It also had a "feature" that if you turned the power off and on right away it would enter a flashing "911" mode which was supposed to conjure up cops or the marines or something.

I came home one night and a new CFL that I had just put in it was burned out. Turns out that there was a momentary power fluctuation an hour or so earlier (I had to reset some digital clocks, so I checked my UPS log). No sign of any cops or marines showing up though.

I have found that heat will shorten a CFL's life. The ones I have in recessed or fully enclosed fixtures don't last nearly as long as ones in table lamps, for example.

This could be mitigated by using banks of capacitors. When fully charged, the banks would be run in parallel. After discharging to half voltage half of the capacitors would be placed in series with the other half, returning to the original voltage. Repeat until all of the capacitors are in series.

Each new configuration would drop to half-voltage in half of the time as the previous configuration, so you'd hit a point of diminishing returns pretty quickly, but you'd still do better than the 30% capacity loss from your example.

As an aside, because a cap's voltage is proportional to charge a 'fuel gauge' would be a lot more accurate than the battery indicators we are used to on our portable devices.