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."
Making lighting more efficient could increase energy use, not decrease it
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.
check the answer from the paper's author in this week Economist. they clearly state that the journalist misunderstood the conclusions...
This is not news to anyone who's ever owned an Easy Bake Oven.
My postings are informational and does not constitute legal advice. Act on it at your risk.
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
Stop buying the cheapest shitty bulbs you can find.
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.
"I care about the planet as much as the next guy"
In oher words, you don't give a shit?
Bad light colour, low light output and short lifetimes are all exact symptoms of buying bad lights.
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."
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
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.
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.
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?
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
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.