Slashdot Mirror
Selling Incandescent Light Bulbs As Heating Devices
Csiko writes "The European Union has banned by law trading of incandescent light bulbs due to their bad efficiency/ecology (most of the energy is transformed into heat). A company is now trying to bypass this restriction by offering their incandescent light bulb products as a heating device (article in German) instead of a light device. Still, their 'heat balls' give light as well as heating. So — every law can be bypassed if you have some creativity!"
What's wrong with that, it's not as if they're being misleading. That "wasted" energy has to go somewhere and if it's being used to heat up your home in the winter, then it's hardly "wasted."
But precedent suggests that this will serve merely to increase the demand for light. The consequence may not be just more light for the same amount of energy, but an actual increase in energy consumption, rather than the decrease hoped for by those promoting new forms of lighting.
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This is not news to anyone who's ever owned an Easy Bake Oven.
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This is the primary heating element in an ez bake oven. So they must remain available for the children.
who is John Galt?
We should ban them. Too much of the energy is emitted in the visible spectrum, not as heat.
the growth in cynicism and rebellion has not been without cause
Or do other people similarly dislike CFCs? In the cold they take several minutes to come on. The light they give off is harsh. And, at least where I am, I have a hell of a time trying to get rid of them when they die - there's a single store in the area that takes them (though dozens sell them). Oh, and they don't seem to last any longer than incandescents, though they cost more, and at least on the box claim that they should. How am I saving the planet again?
Jealously hoarding mod points since 2007.
The heating effect is important here too.
I care about the planet as much as the next guy, but I really hate florescent bulbs. I've used enough of them in my house that I know they don't last longer, despite claims. Often they take time to come up to full brightness. The color temperature they add to a room is a dingy yellow, so they give off an unpleasant light.
Last and most importantly, most people don't know how to dispose of them properly, and many communities do not have a disposal strategy. I'm concerned that the long term downside of mercury in the soil and water table outweigh the energy savings.
Ever thought that maybe they are marketing them as heat sources because that is their new intended use, rather than just a way to get around the law? Surely not that many people would choose to use higher energy lighting what with the rising energy prices, even if it did save them a few quid on the bulb.
Using lightbulbs as heating is not exactly an original idea. I have used lightbulbs as a heat lamp to warm ducklings. If they were banned then you would have to spend £20 upwards on a proper heat lamp, which for two or three chicks or ducklings is a total waste.
Get these people into an Information Technology role immediately.
Won't anyone think of the children?!?
It is hard to compete with a 50 cent Incandescent bulb in any country.
Raising prices or banning the cheap bulb will just make poor people poorer.
With LED or CFL bulbs costing between $5-$50, GE, Phillips and friends will be the ONLY winners with those laws.
(Note: CFL under $5 tend to give headaches, make colours look awful and last about as long as regular bulbs)
Solution: Make every household own and use at least one "good" non-Incandescent bulb per house and more if the house is worth lots of $$.
As the price of non-Incandescent bulbs go down, up the quota and/or limit access to Incandescent bulbs.
You don't police it like the US does drugs. Instead you make it a requirement to pass a house inspection, permit inspections, etc.
You cannot ban ALL Incandescent bulbs because you cannot get substitutes for all socket types and sizes.
Also what happens if they develop a much better Incandescent bulb that is almost on-par with substitutes?
If they should ban any Incandescent bulbs it should be the ones that give off little light compared to others.
There has been talk about labelling light bulbs with the about of light (in lumens/candle power/etc.) they give off.
They should have done that years ago before thinking about banning bulbs.
Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
I doubt many people are going to start buying these instead of fluorescent bulbs. One major advantage of incandescents was the price. These "heat bulbs" are for sale at EUR 1.70 ($2.28), plus shipping costs. They will appeal to some people but the vast majority will continue to buy bulbs from supermarkets, which means they'll be buying CFLs, which means these regulations will have achieved their goal (reduction in power demand, rather than complete elimination of incandescents).
"A week in the lab saves an hour in the library"
The European union has banned by law trading of incandescent light bulbs due to their bad efficiency/ecology reasons (most of the energy is transformed into heat).
If these items are generally better, in terms of energy consumption, and are likewise sold at a reasonable price, they OUGHT to make sense to buy. (Or make cents, as it were.) If they don't then people should be free to wait until they do.
On the inverse, if there's a law requiring they be the only kind of bulb, then they can be built without concern for energy savings, and sold at any price. After all, the law says you have to have them, so why not profit from the artificial demand.
Oh, and by the way, all that artificial demand is damaging the economy, which will likely lead to war, which is about the least 'green' thing imaginable. Why is it that we love to talk long term about climate change and human behavior, but can't seem to do so about economics? I'm astounded mostly because while the former is a natural phenomenon that could be influenced by humanity, the latter is entirely human and will cease to exist when we do.
Just astounding.
We live in a rural area. We aren't on city water, we have a well. About 3 or 4 times a year it gets cold enough that we turn on a light in the pump house to help raise the temperature to protect our already well insulated pipes. This is a very effective solution for us and safer than using a space heater. The space heater costs a lot more than a lightbulb and isn't considered 'safe to leave unattended.' We also have chickens. We have a heatlamp in there, and they can move in/out of it's light to control their own temp (don't want them cooked... yet...)
Do we NEED more fucking regulations? Give me a break.
Do not meddle in the affairs of sysadmins, for they are subtle, and quick to anger.
for various crafts / hobbies --- e.g., every heat box design I've seen for curing epoxy when making a fiberglass-laminate (archery) bow uses a bank of ###-watt light bulbs.
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
It's not all that creative, actually. My wife and I were exasperated when we went to the store here in the U.S. to find incandescent bulbs to use as brooding lamps to help keep our quail chicks warm. Incandescent bulbs actually have value qua their property of emitting heat.
You assumption is wrong. I'm not buying crappy lights.
I can't help but notice it takes three bulbs to light a room when two used to do the job nicely. I think that's going to nullify much of the energy saving goals over time. I wonder how many people have added a new lamp or two in the house after converting to new bulbs?
This isn't 'bypassing' the law. Many incandescent bulbs are used as inexpensive low-power heating devices for small outdoor enclosures where a small amount of heat is required to control interior humidity. Try buying a 50-watt electric heater for a few dollars. The light produced in the process is just a fringe benefit.
I don't know where you buy your CFLs from, but the ones I have come on like any normal incandescent light build does.
I guess you either live somewhere that's warm all the year round or you heat your rooms 24 hours a day. In winter mornings my room temperature is about 5 degrees C and it takes a minute for the CFLs to reach normal brightness. My wife insists that we keep the stairway light on all night so that the stairs are well lit, so I am not exactly sure we save any energy.
Although it is not approved by the FDA as an ingredient in foods [to replace HFCS and/or Aspartame] Stevia is being sold as a dietary supplement and more recently as a sweetener that may be added to foods by the end user. Sweetleaf, a sweetener as natural as sugar simply can't get the approval that high fructose corn syrup and aspartame have been able to acquire. So, instead, it is sold as "something else."
I have 2 incandescents and 2 cfl's in the bathroom.
I flick the switch here is the result.
CFL: Up to 60 seconds of absolutely dim, sick light from the CFL's (these are less than 6 months old). You can see the coil inside the dim pastic bubl-- then finally a bit 'bluish' light becomes too bright to look at directly without being dazzled.
INC: Instant "warm" bright light floods the bathroom.
The lights are on in the bathroom less than 7 hours a week. This is a particularly bad place for CFL's. CFL's are okay where turn the light on, can tolerate sucky light for 60 seconds and then it's decent for hours.
But just like "high fructose corn syrup" vs "sugar"-- it's CLOSE but not the SAME. Side by side, I prefer incandescent lighting for night time lighting. It feels better- and even the warm glow CFL's are not the same.
Given the fact that CFL's useful life is 1/5th that of their "rated" life, it seems to me that CFL's are worse for the environment. While they still "light", they light at half intensity after about 8 months. The quality of the light is putrid.
I'm more excited about LED lighting tho it is expensive. It's more suited for "fill" lighting at this time and I use one on my porch-- it draws 2 watts and I leave it on all the time. It's a "60 watt" but it's clear just from looking at it that is really more like a 30 watt incandescent bulb.
This "efficiency" rating seems to expect we'll be happy in a dark room with a spot where we are as opposed to a room bathed with light. Incandescents are partially "innefficient" because they shine light everywhere. They are very well suited for lighting an entire room instantly.
I'm personally buying a few hundred bucks worth of incandescent and putting them in a closet.
What's sad is that the newer incandescents may only use 25% of the energy but the laws are based on the technology- not on the energy consumption and they ignore the mercury poisoning aspects.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
When we had -20 degree (Fahrenheit) weather at my University, the main Ethernet switch in the (unheated) wiring closet had its FDDI interface pack up. I just stole a torchiere lamp from a grad student's office and put it under the problem box. No problems, except for the ice on the way home. Incandescence just works!
People forget that heat loss isn't an energy loss if you are heating your home already.
I don't know where you buy your CFLs from, but the ones I have come on like any normal incandescent light build does.
I guess you either live somewhere that's warm all the year round or you heat your rooms 24 hours a day. In winter mornings my room temperature is about 5 degrees C and it takes a minute for the CFLs to reach normal brightness. My wife insists that we keep the stairway light on all night so that the stairs are well lit, so I am not exactly sure we save any energy.
Wait, you really let your house interior get down to 5C (that's 41F to most of us in the USA)!?!?!
Oh, I get it, you live in a tent. How did you find one with stairs?
Seriously, put some insulation in the walls and roof before you complain that modern lamps don't work in your house, or move from the freezer to a modern house.
Putting moderation advice in your
at Costco and Home Depot they run just over $1 per bulb. with the energy savings you have to be crazy to keep on looking for incandescent bulbs
haha. Yeah. I think the same way about my hot water tank - which is only "60%" efficient. The 40% of the energy that is lost, heats up my house! Although, maybe not in the most convenient of places..
CFLs, which are actually superior to incandescents by most measures will be used naturally in almost all areas except those few where incandescents are truely superior ( such as heating - I've seen them used for instance to heat a box housing baby chicks - a use for which a cfl would not do ). The law would have that person buy a heater and a cfl bulb at greater expense to do both jobs.
Laws simply can not mandate true efficiency. They can only EVER a) redirect resources and/or b) decrease efficiency.
...
Hey, if I can't use a CFL in my easy bake oven, how am I supposed to make delicious baked goods?
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Did you just seriously argue that lightbulb regulation will lead to war? Seriously?
That's pretty goddamn stupid, even for Slashdot.
indirectly CFL will save the environment.. when the human dies off from mercury poisoning
Of course there's the obvious question: are externalities being properly priced into the prices of both kinds of light bulbs?
Or put another way, on the one hand governments subsidize the cost of electricity and on the other they want people to still use the more energy-efficient light bulbs... The net result is counter-regulation to offset the existing regulation.
This web site is run by people who claim that there is no greenhouse effect -- it's only a scam by those British scientists ("this is the biggest science scandal in modern times", "CO2 is not a poison, plants need it", "there have always been warm and cold ages" etc., see the link at the bottom of the page: "CO2 - cause or symptom?").
Say out loud: I'm an Aspie and I'm somewhat proud, I guess. Uh. Can I write an email in all caps instead? Hm...
Like here in the States as well...
When my oven/fridge/microwave light goes out, I'll just stick a CFL in there!!
"Congratulations, Boots. Your robot has become self-aware. You're a daddy now." -- Dr. Rho Bowman
People are making all sorts of comments in response to this article about what's really efficienct and what works the best. Excuse me but has anyone stopped to consider the fundamental question of what business does the government have banning light bulbs in the first place?
That is true of anything. If it uses electricity, the plant efficiency is the same.
However that doesn't imply wastefulness, it would well be a hydro, solar or nuclear plant. Also in some areas, natural gas isn't available. Where my parents live you heat your house using electricity. There just isn't natural gas hookups to be had.
Electrical radiant is not at all an inefficient way to heat your house. The original poster didn't know what he was talking about.
You'd still be better off with a heat pump than with resistance heating. And if it gets really cold where you are, you can do so-called "geothermal" heating - which is really just a heat pump with the coils buried underground.
I use a 350 watt halogen as a heatsource since it is very effective and unless it is cold, I can't use it.
And, for the record, there are plenty of cheap-ass incandescent that put out harsh lighting. I've been buying CFLs for about 6 years now. The first batch of 4 that I tried cost about 4 bucks each and lasted between 3 and 5 years. Then I bought a 10-pack for $25 that were much better quality, brighter, softer and all are still going. I'm quite sure that I'm ahead for what the incandescents would have cost me in electricity.
Also, the original 4 had a delay of under a second when turned on for the 1st time in a day. If they were turned off and then back on within 4-6 hours, there was no noticeable delay.
The newer batch doesn't have a significant delay at all.
(Note that I'm not addressing outdoor CFLs - I've never used them)
If you're bitching about a 1-sec delay once a day, you're just whining - what the hell is so urgent in your life that 1 second is a deal breaker?
Not liking the light quality is more understandable but pretty much every light in every house or apartment I've seen in the last decades are shaded and my CFLs put out light that looks
a lot like that from vestibule high-intensity lamps.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
Before burning, that carbon was sequestered in the form of wood, and would have stayed sequestered for quite a long time. After burning, the carbon was liberated in the form of CO2. Yes, over the long term, wood burning has zero CO2 emissions. But using hydro instead of wood actually has negative emissions, as the trees continue to sequester carbon.
Practically everyone else on earth would be better off to just leave the CFLs in. And you'd be no worse off (and it would be a lot more convenient) to just get an electric space heater and leave your CFLs in place.
I remember, back in the mid-1960's, we used to put a light bulb, with aluminum foil wrapped around it (to block the light) at the top of our doghouse in winter. This, along with and old carpet remnant for a door, kept the doghouse nice and toasty... just in case anyone was thinking about trying to patent the idea of incandescent light bulbs as heating devices...
CFLs result in lower lifetime mercury emissions than incandescents.
For small outdoor cat/dog houses, incandescent lighting has always been an inexpensive heating solution (bonus for on/off state being quite visible).
I can remember reading a study about half a year ago that concluded that low heat output lightbulbs are only energy efficient in areas where the climate is warm in the winter months. The heat released in the winter is more energy efficient (only very slightly but still it's on the plus side) than running a low heat light bulb (LED, CF) and generating the lost head by traditional methods (electric heat, heating oil, natural gas, etc). It might be more "green" to just switch light bulbs with the season.
It would help if you understood the current situation regarding bulb regulations better, before prescribing changes.
As usual, the price of incandescent light bulbs does not include the negative externalities their use implies. And also, people typically don't look at the life-cycle cost of the things they buy, just the up-front price. So the market, as is so frequently the case, is broken, and requires government help to get fixed.
...if the EU were also ready to take responsibility for the additional costs, monetary and environmental, of their meddling. I use CFs where I can, but my house is full of dimmers which don't work with anything but incandescents. I'm also pretty sure that many of my CFs will be made obsolete by progress in LED lighting, which is even more efficient and environmentally benign.
I'm no free-market fundamentalist, but in this case the EU, rather than throwing its weight around passing ill thought-out legislation, could have waited for market forces and common sense to produce the desired result.
(Yes, I know: there's nothing rarer than common sense...)
Science fiction for grown-ups...
Many types of incandescent bulb, including heat lamps, will remain available even after the regulations come fully into effect. As for your question, if the choice is between continuing to send supertankers full of dollar bills to Saudi Arabia, and producing sensible regulations that will at least somewhat cut down on this wholly unnecessary expense, I'm in favor of the regulations.
Many types of incandescent bulb, including heat lamps, will remain available after these regulations come into full effect. I'm not sure where people got the idea that all incandescents are no more, but I am pretty sure that your final sentence is nothing more than totally unfounded propaganda. As another example: CAFE standards for car gas mileage.
If I buy a 60w incandescent bulb I know it's going to be pretty much the same as the last one. The CFLs are all over the place. Most people don't want to read consumer reports to replace a fscking light bulb. They just want it to work.
Alta's suggestion about buying LEDs is far more useful.
Right, because lots of people want the freedom to waste all kinds of money and generate a lot more pollution. The only reason the government needs to get involved in the first place is because the sticker price on an incandescent was lower than that of a CFL - the lifecycle cost of the CFL was considerably less. And we're getting to the point, because of economies of scale, that even the sticker price on a CFL is not much more than an incandescent... which wouldn't have happened if the gov't hadn't kicked off demand. Not to mention that incandescents aren't even banned - they've just instituted performance standards for light bulbs, and many specialty types of incandescents have been exempted from that.
The government has the right to regulate light bulbs because the use of electricity has very significant negative externalities, which no one is paying for. So could we please stop with the "OMFG teh socialists are coming for our light bulbs! Man the battlements!" crap already?
Efficiency isn't "energy that does what I want" / "energy in." The definition of efficiency is "useful work/energy out" / "heat taken from the hot bath" = 1 - "heat given to cold bath" / "heat taken from hot bath." The efficiency of the lightbulb as a heater is 0. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_efficiency Much more efficient is to use a heat pump that not only turns all the input work into heat, but also marshals heat from the surroundings to boost it's efficiency. Basically, you're refrigerating the outside.
The rule of thumb I have seen is that over half of produced energy is wasted in this way.
Most of the loss is within the power station. Where the heat energy is converted to electricity. Only 35-60% of the energy produced is converted to electricity int the first place (depending on generation system).
Transmission is relatively efficient in comparison.
Course in some countries (like Finland or Denmark), they distribute the "waste" heat produced by power plants and people use that in industrial processes, space heating, hot water production etc. So they have (relatively) close to 100% efficiency.
Deleted
Also as you say gas heat is about 90% efficient, where electric heat is by definition 100% efficient...
My current place has a heat pump. When the temperature is between 40-60 degrees fahrenheit, I get significantly more heat out than electrical energy used by the appliance. Since I live in Phoenix, the low temperature only gets below 40 degrees for a couple days a winter.
Air-source heat pumps don't work so well in colder weather because ice builds up on the outside coils. Ground-source heat pumps are vastly superior to air-source year round... They just cost a lot more to install.
Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
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There is a contraption used to bend the wood that forms the sides of an acoustic guitar. One version of it uses light bulbs.
1 Bend the wood,
2 let it cool in a form
3 Glue it up
4 Profit ! (not really)
No electricity producer could stay in business if they lost half their power in transmission and distribution. Even in Edison's day with DC transmission, I doubt the losses were ever 50%. With modern high-voltage AC transmission, typical losses are around 2%.
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
Trust me, we are. The sooner we ban incandescent light bulbs, the sooner we can save children from one of the many sources of nasty, chemical-tasting confections. Seriously, have you tasted that crap? I'd much rather have my child help me make a REAL cake. You have a lot more steps available to assign to a kid of any age, meaning many more opportunities to make a game out of it. Plus, you'll actually want to eat the finished product. Sure, a four-year-old will eat practically anything if it has enough sugar in it, but you know they'll want you to join them. Do you want to choke down barely-edible "baked goods"?
It's toasted!
The company page for the "Heat bulbs" links to a wacko, right-wing "humans don't cause global warming" page (in German). Perhaps this company is funded by the American oil companies.
The company page also links to a news report saying the sleep hormone melatonin is disrupted by the strong blue component of CFLs. In contrast to the global warming "debate" (those are air quotes, btw), the impact of proper lighting spectrum is scientifically sound.
I have lots of ceiling fixtures of the "dome" style, and CFLs are too long to fit inside them. I have wall fixtures (e.g. over bathroom mirrors) and CFLs extend below the glass shade, leading to a very annoying glare. I'd like to switch to LEDs,but there are no products on the market which both have 360 illumination and the lumen output of a 60 or 75W incandescent.
Personally, I vote for a massive increase in the cost of electricity, and let both consumers and businesses decide what type and how much light they want.
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
This reminds me of my college days, when the school was switching from all DEC Pro-350 computers to PCs. They were throwing out pallets of the DECs, and students were grabbing them all up - to use as space heaters. Had an off-campus basement apartment ? Extra cold night ? Turn on another DEC Pro-350 !
Power from hydro-electric plants have traditionally been quite inexpensive here in Norway, it is only over the last 10 years or so that we've gotten to the point where other forms of heating (particularly heat pumps) have started to become really attractive.
(BTW, since we have no domestic gas grid, we instead sell all our North Sea gas to Britain, Germany, Holland and other EU countries.)
We need some form of home heating maybe 8-9 months a year, so it made perfect sense to me to leave more or less all electric lights on all day, except in the middle of summer when it doesn't really get very dark at all.
Ten years ago I started to replace old bulbs with more energy-efficient alternatives like halogen, these days I put in LED instead.
For a new house we're having built we've decided on using very energy-efficient construction (25 cm/10") wall isolation, (35 cm/14") roof isolation, top grade glass and a balanced ventilation setup with a heat exchanger.
BTW, this is just a small step above the latest legislated minimum requirements for new homes in this country.
Terje
"almost all programming can be viewed as an exercise in caching"
One northern US city replaced many lamps in their streetlights with LCDs (I believe vs CFL) and had problems with snow and ice building up and blocking visibility of te lights. This wasn't a problem with the incandescent lamps because they melted the snow and ice. Sometimes unintended consequences can be good.
The government has the right to regulate light bulbs because the use of electricity has very significant negative externalities, which no one is paying for.?
See topic.
A quote from the document: "With conventional lighting, between 89 to 96 per cent of lighting energy use is converted to heat and contributes to space heating as internal gains."
I don't find them tasty, but then, I also don't eat mud pies like children do. When my daughter was young enough to eat mud pies and offered me one, I'd simply say I was full. Try that.
fix the CSS!
A couple of older Intel CPUs running at full throttle can heat a home better than any stinking light bulb. Go modern! Use computers to warm your home!
This was a bed warmer from the late 50's to mid 60's and was basically a light bulb in a large metal frame.
Your are neglecting to account for the internal resistance of the battery. The copper wire has low resistance, and so you are effectively shorting the battery. The battery voltage will sag due to the internal resistance, but a large current will be flowing. So power (P=V*A) is being dissipated both inside the battery and in the wire. The nichrome wire has a higher resistance than the copper, and so a smaller current flows, but the battery voltage sags less under this load so that more power is dissipated in the nichrome wire and less is dissipated in the battery as compared to the copper wire. For maximum power transfer, the wire resistance should be the same as the battery's internal resistance. Take a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impedance_matching.
using incandescent globes for heating is not _that_ uncommon in tropical areas... eh? you might say... WTF? even.... well simple, you put a low wattage (20-40) in your linen cupboard to keep humidity from condensing in what would normally be a cooler part of the house and it helps stop mould and mildew forming. it would be insane to have space heating in a house like my ex's in Broome Australia that normally sees a minimum temperature of, say, 15c at the coldest and averages around 30c and with almost constat high humidity... In this case it is light that is the waste product.
I just saw a TED talk where the speaker described a program to build low-cost, easy-maintenance infant incubators out of automobile parts - because they were simple to repair and maintain; the main heating element was a pair of auto headlights underneath a dispersal plate.
Also, anybody heard about the cities and towns in the upper mid-west who are switching their traffic signals back to incandescent bulbs because the new LED bulbs don't melt the ice and snow off the signals in the winter?
It seems like a bad law, with too many exceptions or lousy consequences to be worth enforcing.
When I was a little kid I remember my Dad telling me about using incandescent light bulb(s) to prevent the pump and pipes from freezing when the winter temperatures would fall well below zero. Granted the pump house was well insulated to retain the heat. I can also see using a backup bulb placed in a fixture governed by light sensor that turned on only if the first bulb died to provide a backup.
I recall seeing light bulbs used for their heating properties in a couple of other situations. I recall a mechanics trouble light turned on and placed under the hood of a car in winter to keep the engine block from getting too cold to start. I seem to recall a blanket and tarp also place over the hood of the car. I recall using the heat from a light bulb to soften plastic parts to mold them for a custom fit (plastic models and later car parts). Not to mention the easy bake oven application.
So I would have to say their is plenty of prior art to support light bulbs imported as heating devices.
The only way to realize the return on investment promised by CFLs is if you can keep the CFL for the normal life of the bulb. In my case, with three boys under 10 years old, the bulbs in the table and desk lamps in their bedrooms get broken at least once a month from all their rough-housing. I will never get the promised return on investment from CFLs, because bulbs get broken too often at my house; conventional incandescent bulbs are a much more economical choice for me. How come nobody mentions accidental bulb breakage when they talk about how great CFLs are. Am I the only person who has children? Why can't I choose the bulb that is most economical for me instead of having the government mandate a bulb that will cost my family more money?
But I think the important thing is that the John Galt character is not autobiographical of the author Ayn Rand. The biographical material suggests that "self important rich, privileged . . . " is the sort of Mr. Right (excuse the pun) Ms. Rand was looking for, perhaps along the lines of some manner of sado-masochistic fantasy "exploit me! Please, please, exploit me!"
Hydro is a fixed resource that _will_ be used up at the end of the year (so to speak, obviously some years you end up with full reservoirs).
When you use an extra kwh there is not magically more water running down the hill.
Your incremental power comes mostly from coal, same as everybody else.
It doesn't matter where you live.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
It is no more a perpetual motion machine than a heating oil delivery truck is. A heating oil delivery truck transports a magnitude more gasoline than it burns. In a typical day of deliveries it may move 10x as much energy as it burns in its engine. In other words the energy transfered is 10x the energy used in the transfer.
In a similar fashion a heat pump simply moves heat energy. In winter it moves heat from outside (even when it is "cold" there is heat energy present). In summer it moves heat from the home to the outside. A heat pump with a COP of 4 adds 4kwh of thermal energy to the home for every 1kwh of electrical energy supplied. In comparison a resistance electrical heating adds 1kwh of thermal energy per 1 kwh of electrical energy supplied.
You get roughly 10kWh energy per cubic meter.
Thus even with an older 90% efficiency furnace (97% AFUE are available today) it would require natural gas price that is roughly doubled (48 cents per cubic meter) to break even on $0.053/Kwh electrical heating.
At 97% AFUE it would be more like 50+ cents.
which it doesn't. Efficiency only applies when converting energy.
Burn natural gas results in conversion of chemical energy into thermal energy. At best that conversion is 100% efficiency (real world it is more like 85%-95%).
However a heat pump doesn't convert energy. It simply MOVES energy (hence the very aptly named heat PUMP).
It moves thermal energy from outside the home into the home. (Similar to a refrigerator or AC in reverse).
As such it can "produce" >1 kwh of thermal energy per 1kwh of electrical energy. The exact limit depends on difference between the two heat sources (inside and outside). This why geothermal heat pumps have higher COP. The ground remains warmer than outside air in the winter. The ground also remains cooler in the summer than the outside air.
Carnot limit places an upper limit on the max COP and it varies depending on the outside heat source and required inside heat level. The theoretical limit is about 6:1 (600%) to 12:1 (1200%) in real world current geothermal heat pumps achieve about half that.
Hydro is a fixed resource that _will_ be used up at the end of the year (so to speak, obviously some years you end up with full reservoirs).
When you use an extra kwh there is not magically more water running down the hill.
Your incremental power comes mostly from coal, same as everybody else.
It doesn't matter where you live.
Actually it does matter. As part of an experiment I built a cistern at the top of my hill. During the day, solar panels would power my home. Batteries were minimal and just used for basic leveling. During periods of overgeneration it would power a pump which would send water up the hill into my cistern. In the evenings, rather than rely only on my batteries for power, if it would drop low (20% or so to avoid deep cycling my batteries), the cistern would open and water would flow down the hill into a lower receiving cistern. At the lower cistern, I had a hydro-electric generator which would then provide power via the flowing water.
I didn't have to pump that often either, as the upper cistern was filled from runoff from the mountain (it was a rainy area) and my field, even though a 10% incline often had marshy areas or puddles.
So basically what I had built was a hybrid system. Solar/Hydro-electric. The cistern was essentially a battery which was 'charged' by the system pumping water up the hill from excess solar power. It was supplimented by standard runoff.
Perhaps on a large scale, this wouldn't work, but I've always been an advocate for checking our population growth so that we can each live in mostly sustainable ways.
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
Hey, I'm all for this. The government shouldn't "ban" incandescent lights; they should give people a choice as to what they want to buy. Personally I prefer CFLs, but if someone wants to get the old fashioned light bulbs why not? It's their electric bill, not mine.
Here in the northern U.S., electric block heaters are common. Before I ever had a car with a real block heater, however, I used an incandescent bulb tucked under the hood to keep the engine block (really, the oil pan) warm on those -20F nights. You just put the bulb in a trouble light cage, hooked it somewhere in the lower half of the engine compartment, and left the light on all night.
I use irony whenever I can, but my shirts are still wrinkled...
Banning incandescent light bulbs in any household requiring heat for more than half of the year is really really silly. People will just end up burning more oil/coal/NG to compensate in the winter months.
It is stupid that the government is outlawing incandescent bulbs. They should let the cost of electricity rise to it's natural level and then market forces would work to do the job as needed. The fact is, in our cold climate there is a good use for light giving heat balls. Heat lamps have a lot of valid applications.
You describe pumped hydro.
On a large scale it does 'massive ecological damage', but I'm OK with that so we'll skip that point. (Chum all you want. I like catfish.)
In the real world the thing that runs the pumps (at night 'cause that's how they run pumped hydro) is coal fired thermal and nukes (as those are the plants that like to run 100% all the time).
In any case the GP was basically saying 'my power is hydro' it doesn't matter if I waste it. He knows nothing about fungible things like power.
Someone living off grid is an exception. Bet your solar panels where made with coal power. Same as the batteries, pump and generator.
I'm guessing the pump part of your setup had a net negative impact (your bottom line or the ecology, you pick).
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Ha hahahahaha!
I'm here for the experience, not the Hyperbole.
If these items are generally better, in terms of energy consumption, and are likewise sold at a reasonable price, they OUGHT to make sense to buy. (Or make cents, as it were.) If they don't then people should be free to wait until they do.
On the inverse, if there's a law requiring they be the only kind of bulb, then they can be built without concern for energy savings, and sold at any price. After all, the law says you have to have them, so why not profit from the artificial demand.
They seem to use less energy, thus save money... on the other hand our price of electricity is about half and half, the other half being the transfer of said energy. And one engineer at a grid company has calculated that our transfer prices should go to 5-6x to cover the costs of upgrades that are needed to handle the parasitic currents and harmonics.
There are a few problems with my using CFLs.
1. They're expensive. I'm on a tight budget.
2. I live in an apartment complex. The built-in fixtures and appliances (light fixtures, fridge, stove/oven) are not compatible with CFL bulbs and I cannot change such built-in parts of the rental unit according to lease terms.
3. Fluorescent lighting hurts my eyes. Yes, even the "soft-white" and other CFL types.
4. I own and regularly use certain electronic test equipment which uses standard incandescent light bulbs as a central component essential to its' function.
5. I resent having my choices in such things forcibly removed by government, either by outright "outlawing" via regulation over which I have no say or, being "nudged" by government tactics such as deliberately & artificially causing energy prices to increase to make other options less feasible economically.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
If we are trying to reduce inifficiencies and energy waste, then I suggest a good place to start would be to eliminate the self-perpetuating bureaucracy that deem it necessary to micro-legislate every aspect of our lives like this one. Tell me, exactly what business does the EU have in passing laws that regulate what kind of light bulb I can use? Utter madness.
Radiated heat, as in light bulbs, can heat more efficiently than ovens because ovens typically heat the air, while heat radiation can heat the objects directly. One instance of this I have seen, was factory workers working in cold air while being warm from heat lamps directed at them.
The family farmstead that my brother and I have has a small pump for a pond to provide water for livestock. The pumphouse is essentially a 2' x 2' x 2' "building" of wood, insulated, with a 60W lightbulb to keep the pump from freezing up in cold weather.
A CFL has about 4-5 grams of mercury in it.
You are off by a factor of a thousand. Amount of mercury is more like 4-5 milligrams, about the same amount of mercury as 10 pounds of Swordfish.
I've been a bit worried about this, actually, since I use a light bulb to add impedance to my DIY degausser. Cheap and works well, provided you can remember Ohm's Law to get the values right.
All of our old bulb have been replaced by the new "high efficient" ones. So, to make up for the lost revenue, the electric company raised their rates. Added "fuel charge." Now, we're paying more for electric, than we were just a few years ago.