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!"
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.
True on the technicalities, but seriously? Electric radiant heat is terribly inefficient, and more often than not you'll be putting the heat source literally at the ceiling.
Or hell, I dunno. Maybe you guys have fond memories of clustering underneath the bare bulb in your bedroom for warmth when you ran out of heating oil or something.
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.
That depends entirely on the relative costs of energy sources and how they are applied. However, as heating appliances go, incandescent bulbs are not exactly optimal for that use.
I can attest, though, that an incandescent desk lamp placed near my keyboard satisfies my lighting needs as well as keeps my fingers above freezing even when the main heat is turned way down. Generally having heat only where it is needed is more efficient than large-area heating, even if the energy source itself is more costly.
=Smidge=
haha. Yeah, that's what i thought. I actually switch out my CFLs to incandescent lightbulbs in the winter in my study because it is warmer. The study is a pretty small room and the lamp is close to me so it works out alright. I don't know about using heat balls in a large space though :p
I have a cabin in upstate NY. It is heated from a wood burning stove. I do the same thing. In the summer, I 'light' the cabin by opening up skylights and CFL bulbs. In the winter, with the much shorter days and VERY cold weather, the incandescent bulbs provide heat and are actually much more efficient than my wood stove.
The electricity comes from a hydroelectric source, which heats my home. Which beats my local natural gas furnace or wood stove in terms of efficiency, emissions, and saves me from cutting down any hardwoods on my property.
It's not enough to heat my entire house, but any time I meet the following conditions, it is the best solution:
1. If temperatures are below 60F and I'd light my wood stove or furnace.
2. If I require light.
Under those two conditions, Incandescent bulbs are more efficient.
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
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.
Bad light colour, low light output and short lifetimes are all exact symptoms of buying bad lights.
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
It's 100% efficient at the home, but the power plants that generate are limited by the laws of thermodynamics to converting only around 30% - 40% of the energy into electricity.
Obligatory wikipedia link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_Engine#Efficiency
Yeah, but knocking over a domino and randomly getting the same output as a thermonuclear bomb will really ruin your day.
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