So many things are being banned it's hard to tell ;)
Could be related to mercury in CFLs, the EU are keen to eliminate mercury. There is also a proposal to ban manufacture of incandescents, but I don't know of a timeframe.
One would hope that oil filled space heaters would take off here in Iowa, given that we have excellent wind resources shut in by lack of long distance transmission lines.
One $2,500 investment would pretty much free us from heating bills and I itch to get this done ...
Not a cure everywhere, but blanket policies are generally not such a good idea. I think the incandescent bulb ban *is* a good thing, as it only troubles the maker of the EasyBake stove ...
I think the incandescent bulb ban *is* a good thing, as it only troubles the maker of the EasyBake stove ...
Places around my house where I don't use CFL bulbs:
- Inside my kitchen stove (gas): Too hot
- Inside my fridge and freezer: Too cold
- In the motion sensor controlled security lights outside the house: Too cold in winter to provide enough light quickly
- In my photographic darkroom: They give off enough light to fog film for 3-5 minutes after you switch them off due to residual glow from the phosphor
- In various task lamps that right now use 12 Volt halogen bulbs: Not available in that size or brightness
- In dimmer equipped fixtures: even the "dimmable" CFL's don't work as promised; lifespan of less than a dozen hours in some cases, audible buzzing, non-smooth dimming and unequal brightness in multi-bulb fixtures
- In my workshop: they have a strobe effect which sometimes makes things like spinning saw blades and grinder wheels seem stationary or slow moving when in fact they are not. Very unsafe!
Please just tax them lots to discourage use where they are not needed but don't ban them outright. All lighting methods are not yet equal in ways that do matter
Not to mention that they are not inherently worse either. USAGE of the bulb determines how wasteful they are over type. I have seen way to many people get the cfl bulbs only to leave them on all the time.
I see misplaced animositiy towards CFLs though from certain conservative quarters as if saving electricity is a sin or something. Most anti CFL people seem to be anti AGW theory too.
All I know is that I replaced all my general lighting incadescents with CFLs and cut my electric bills by 10% this summer. So I like them!
cfl's are great 'only' if your one of those people committed to cutting your light usage as well. i have seen to many people in my area just replace normal light bulbs with them but leave the new ones on all the time thinking that no matter how much you use them they will still always be better then the wast full incondesents.
this is true though. You seem to be confused, the CFL may cost 1-2 $/bulb, but will last 10x longer and with 1/3rd the energy requirement, therefore so long as regular lightbulbs do not cost less than 1/30 the cost of a CFL, you win with a purchase of a CFL (in monitary terms) regardless of the use.
If you are worried about heating, insulate your home. Best investment you can make.
You seem to be confused, the CFL may cost 1-2 $/bulb, but will last 10x longer and with 1/3rd the energy requirement, therefore so long as regular lightbulbs do not cost less than 1/30 the cost of a CFL, you win with a purchase of a CFL (in monitary terms) regardless of the use.
Uh, no.
Let's take a 30W CFL against a 100W incandescent. Assume the CFL lasts 2 years @ $4, and the incan lasts 3 months @ $1, with electricity going for $0.10/kWh.
Assuming you use the light for 8 hours a day - ~3000/yr - the CFL will cost $11/yr ($9 in electricity + $2 in replacement), vs. $34 for the incan ($30 in electricity + $4 in replacement). So the CFL is a huge win in normal use.
However, if you did the silly "keep the light on all the time" thing for a light that was rarely used before, you could certainly end up spending more. If the light was normally used only 2 hours/day, the incan would be $12/yr, whereas the CFL - used 24 hours/day - would be $29/yr.
So usage matters; indeed, usage is practically all that matters - you can see here how little the purchase price of the bulbs matters compared to the electricity costs.
Just a note, since I didn't see an address for you. You asked a question on Nov. 27, and I just offered a reply this evening (Dec. 2). (I say this because I took it as a sincere question, and I had some thoughts.) http://www.theoildrum.com/node/3293#comment-272124
Well, I see a couple of different perspectives, so a quick overview.
Things are 'banned' all the time in the Europe - and Europeans know any number of ways how to get around the bans. For example, when Telekom in Germany used to license everything hooked up to their phone network, only Telekom approved answering machines or wireless phones could be purchased - unless the unit you bought was for 'export only.' Another way around a ban is all the exceptions which will be written into the law.
However, as for banning incandescent bulbs - their efficiency is poor, and whether this meets either doomer or cornucopian approval, efficiency is going to be a major aspect of how we will be dealing with things for the next several decades. Whether this efficiency will be enlightened (LEDs replacing CF replacing incandescent, etc. - with LEDs being very practical to use in a PV framework) or brutal (the person with a woodburning stove that burns less wood will freeze more slowly than someone with an open fireplace) is a separate issue.
As for using electricity for heating - well, it has its place in terms of using baseload in a practical manner. Generally, electric heating done ovrnight is fairly cost effective, unless you guess wrong about the next day's weather - the German systems I'm most familiar with simply store the heat in bricks. Newer systems use floor heating, but I don't think they are as efficient in baseload terms.
But there is a strange aspect in terms of incandescents - they are part of your heating, the same way a refrigerator is. Essentially, a kilowatt powering the lights is a kilowatt of heat.
This is why efficiency and conservation have to be very carefully considered. More efficient lighting may lead to higher heating requirements, which actually may mean that the efficiency increase is improved, as burning natural gas directly for heat is much more efficient than burning it for generating electricity. (During the first energy crisis, Fairfax County opened its new administration building - which was designed to have the lights on 24 hours a day, as part of its heating system. Obviously, this was seen as remarkably wasteful at the time, but actually, it wasn't that bad - not counting summer, of course - except that having a 10 story building lit up continuously seemed a beacon of wastefulness when conservation was considered necessary.)
But whether such an increase in efficiency can actually be called conservation is another matter - after all, natural gas is still being burned. But using LEDs with a PV/battery system, and adding home insulation, may lead to a reduction in both terms of electricity use and in terms of natural gas use - but in this case, the efficiency of LEDs and home insulation have nothing to do with one another at all. Except for allowing people to live comfortably within a framework which is at least potentially sustainable.
The EU, whose citizens in general have more faith in communal solutions to communal problems, is attempting to change things through regulation, without waiting for people to decide it is their self-interest to do so, or for various industries to approve their profits being reduced or eliminated. And the EU, being run by people, will make its share of human mistakes, which is accepted here. America is different. There, it seems, only government mistakes are considered true mistakes.
As a sidenote - 10 years ago, according to a radio report, the most commonly shoplifted item in Germany was CF bulbs. Which actually makes sense - at the time, not only did they cost a lot, but stealing them would lead to fairly substantial long term savings for the thief. I always imagined that most of the thiefs were grandparents, widows, pensioners, etc.
Here in Portland, we've had, for December 1, an exceptionally cold (20f), Windy and Sunny day, where my house could have been entirely Heated by any of a number of Solar Heating options, like these Solar Hot Air Panels that are under construction in the basement.. as well as a good amount of Windpower, which certainly could have just been directly wired to Incandescents inside, producing both heat and light without the losses of batteries and related circuitry. Even the food we are cooking on our electric range is using the heat twice during this season, making the stove a good bit more economical in wintertime.
Of course, the use of Electric Lighting AT ALL during a bright sunny day is a bit of legacy foolishness that I also aim to dismantle with a system that starts with a Tracked-Mirror atop each of my Three Disused ChimneyShafts, providing a constant beam of nearly full sunlight down through the entire depth of the 3story, 3-Apartment building, wherein each floor can 'dip' a mirror into a designated pie-slice of that light, to be directed into the room along the ceiling to where-ever it is needed, diffused, split, filtered, lensed or reflected into useful forms..
I'm not all that impressed by the light that comes from these solar 'light-tubes' that I see installed here and there. As a Lighting Cameraman, I can safely say that diffusing your light source too early in its path will cost you a LOT of lightcandles down the line, and the Light tubes are often difuse both at the roof as well as at the outlet.. (Don't even talk to me about rediffusing difuse sources, you get bupkiss out the back end!) Tracking a mirror barely takes any energy, and the complexity is pretty low. Like most Alt-energy, just takes initial investment and design-time.. climbing on my roof is gravy. It's as close to an extreme sport as I've got.
What I especially love: Go into any office, and under the desks of many (most?) of the female clerical workers you will find little electric heaters, heating the air that the air conditioners have cooled. . . because the heaters have heated it. . . because the a/c has cooled it. . . because the heaters have heated it . . . because the a/c has cooled it. . . etc.
An endless feedback loop. Kunstler could have a LOT of fun writing about that one.
but that's not an actual ban and I haven't really heard much about it in the media. (Mind you, I tend to tune it out energy efficiency from bulbs because whether a given illumination bulb dissipates 100W or 9W makes little difference if it's not switched on.)
Alan - since you are talking about LEDs, I'm going to go out on a limb and say it's a ban on the really bright ones that "trick my ride" types like to put into their car headlights.
LED headlights are great, but too-bright ones are a danger to other drivers, and by a certain time in 08 British police may start writing tickets, perhaps expensive ones, for using them in your car.
I don't think you have to worry about Brit DOT regulations keeping you from buying bright white LEDs.
It's a ban on incandesent light bulbs and at the lattitude and climate of the UK it is totally bizarre, since we mostly need HEAT as well when we need artificial light.
In the non-FF future we will need our energy from alternate sources (wind, wave, solar PV etc) and these mostly create electricity - so we will need to heat from electricity as well.
A very simple, easy to recycle, low cost, non poluting device for heating with electricity, that anybody can service if it fails, is the incandesent lamp - and you get the light for free!
The stuff we will be forced to buy are typically 5 to 10 times the price, complex, difficult to recycle and contain heavy metals such as mercury, and to cap it all, most current designs don't give adequate light since they are not a point source.
A person can make Edison bulbs in a garage workshop. They can be made to last a LONG time too.
In the early days of radio some were blowing their own tubes.
But the new solutions all seem to be complicated, take tons of high-tech machinery and computing power, exotic materials, etc.
My solution lately has been to acquire a used bicycle (and fished another out of a dumpster for parts) and get a small motorbike that gets better mileage than my Prius did.
There's something about our culture that's really attracted to complex, techie, solutions to really simple problems.
Well said. My Prius is a gas guzzler. I ride my bike everywhere despite the strange looks. I'm 44. I substitute one trip a day going by bike.
Today I saw only the second bike at the gym I can remember.
It's so sad.
On a funny note, the Personal Trainer at the gym just bought this huge hummer (redundant) to drive 3 or 4 miles to the gym. It's only 5 miles from one side to the other, but I'll give her a break. It's California weather and the town is completely flat.
Aaargh,#$%@*&!!!, This is a perfect example of the the kind of (take your pick) arrogant ostentation or clueless ignorance that is so prevalent among the citizens of this me, me, me society. I no longer have the link but someone once sent me a series of photos titled "Only in America" one of them happened to be of a gym somewhere in LA with two escalators going up on either side of the stairs to the front entrance. Of course there was no one on the stairs and both escalators had people on them with their gym bags!!!??? BTW I'm 54 years old and actually am able to speed walk 3 miles in about 40 minutes if I run I can do it in a little over 30 mins. you can estimate my 5 mile speed. Ok, I have a girl friend who is in training for a half marathon and she regularly runs 5ks (3 miles) and I often accompany her during training. We also do 15 mile bike rides. There is absolutely no excuse for someone to buy and drive a Hummer for trips to the gym or anywhere else for that matter unless, they have their cephalus inserted really far up their anus.
During the non heating season, the incandescent bulb wastes energy, when you add in the source multiplier for the electrical generation, CFL's or better yet, LED's make a lot of sense.
Refrigerators have come a long way recently on energy efficiency, thus they generate a lot less heat. I contend that with much more efficient household appliances and lighting we will have to rethink our heating degree day formula of the average daily temperature from 65 degrees F. When doing energy calculations for my own house I use 68 F as the working number because of cfl's and energy star appliances.
fridges are probably #1 or 2 on the electricity requirements for a house. #1 is typically the sum of all powered off devices, and #2 is the fridge or drier depending on the month.
We recently bought a new A+ energy rated fridge freezer. It has a problem: the fridge door occasionally swings ajar.
I discovered this when I came to get out the butter one day which is close to the fridge lights (2x15W). it was melted!
THe fridge door had come open a little and the lights had come on. The 15W lights and the door being open overcame the fridges cooling ability and spoiled the food.
This all got me thinking: Why sell an A+ rated fridge with incandescent lights in it? Whenever they are on they pour heat into the fridge which then has to be extracted at further energy cost.
I unscrewed the bulbs and even when the door occasionally slips ajar, the butter stays cold.
I recommend this treatment of the fridge if you have adequate ambient light to see inside it.
Eventually it occurred to me to fit 2 low power LED spotlights into the mini screw cap fitting. They stick out from the fittings like Shrek's ears and illuminate the sides of the fridge in pleasingly cold-looking blueish light.
Unfortunately the plastic splash cover no longer fits so it has had to go into storage.
I have had plenty of problems with 240V LED lights burning out but I think the ones in the fridge will last a long time because a: lights not used much, b: low ambient temperature reduces the risk of thermal runaway and burnout of the diodes.
The other fridge defect (yes, I think incandescent light in a fridge are a defect) is the self-opening door. I think I might put a buzzer in parallel to the fridge lights so that there is an alarm when the lights come on. Might lean the whole device back a couple of degrees by chocking up the front on wood or something.
If any fridge designers / manufacturers are listening: LED lighting is the way to go in efficient fridges. Fairly obvious I would have thought!
We routinely use wide masking tape to provide an extra level of insurance on keeping the freezer door of our refrigerator shut. We usually have our freezer section quite jam packed, so occasionally the door wants to top open a crack. The tape assures that this doesn't happen.
At the lattitude of the UK, when we have the non-heating season the day length is long so we hardly need lighting at all as, when it is dark, we are mostly asleep.
Most of the energy we use in domestic situations is for heat.
The payback time on these expensive lamps and heat pumps is years and years. So, it's much better to spend the limited money available on better insulation, then much less energy for heating is required. It is far more efficient to not need to use fossil fuel at all.
We don't need to reduce electrical use, we need to reduce all fossil fuel use - oil, coal, and gas - this is the government's mistake, they wrongly think electricity is the total energy.
The payback time on these expensive lamps and heat pumps is years and years.
Try "months and months".
The energy savings over the course of one year with a CFL vs. regular is around $30. At roughly $3 for a bulb, the payback time for compact fluorescent is only a month or two.
Heat pumps take longer, but based on this analysis, an air-source heat pump added to either an oil furnace or electrical resistance will take 2-7 years to pay back across a wide range of climatic conditions.
it's much better to spend the limited money available on better insulation
Often true, yes. Both is even better, though, and the economics seems fairly favourable.
We don't need to reduce electrical use, we need to reduce all fossil fuel use - oil, coal, and gas - this is the government's mistake, they wrongly think electricity is the total energy.
True, but converting to electricity can be an effective way to do that, since electricity can be generated from non-fossil sources. That's especially valid in countries where most electricity is non-fossil-derived (e.g., Canada, France).
If you still have to provide the heat that would have been provided by the old lamps than there is no saving in energy at all, so your costings are incorrect - in fact I would guarantee that more energy and exotic materials have been used in CFLs.
If you use a CFL then all you have done is bought a much more expensive and less usable and eventually more polluting way of producing light.
I do use CFLs - the government insists that energy companies give some away for free, there are loads available if you know where to look - but then I have insulated my house (with government financial help) have solar panels for hot water (with government financial help) and heat with gas, which at the moment is much cheaper than electricity - and constantly switch off lights where not required.
If you still have to provide the heat that would have been provided by the old lamps than there is no saving in energy at all
Sure...if the building's only source of heat is electrical resistive, and is never off when the lights are on, and is bolted to the ceiling. I'd wager the number of buildings that describes is approximately zero, though.
For a building with any non-resistive heating - whether oil/gas furnace or heat pump - then using light bulbs for heat is simply enormously inefficient in comparison.
For a building where the heat doesn't need to be on constantly - and that's almost every building for months and months, even in the UK - the extra heat from light bulbs is simply wasted.
Finally, heat rises, meaning heating up a small patch of air at the ceiling isn't going to do much to help the occupants of the room. There's a reason heating elements are virtually always low - it's more efficient in terms of how the room feels.
So for 99.9% of buildings, CFL will save substantial amounts of energy and money.
The problem is most people in the UK don't have enough money to insulate their properties properly because limited funds are available despite government grants.
Heat is heat at whatever height in the room it is inserted - the air in the room mixes.
We have got to heat our properties with electricty in the future as other alternatives won't be available - and electricity will likely be in short supply. We have to migrate from FF fast.
Energy reducing expenditure needs to be prioritised as the funds available are so limited - massive amounts of CFL isn't good prioritisation and for most people in the UK probably will not save money, even in the long term.
We hardly have any heat pumps in the UK and compared to adequate insulation their cost is massively more - if we have enough insulation we don't need the complexity of heat pumps at all! They will need replacing/servicing regularly, insulation won't.
In the UK in the summer months we don't need much of either artificial heat or light. We either need both or none.
A Philips SLS25 CFL produces 1,750 lumens of light, consumes 25-watts and has a rated service life of 15,000 hours. The equivalent 120-volt, 100-watt A19 soft white incandescent provides 1,620 lumens and has a service life of just 750 hours. Assuming each of these lamps achieves full maturity, our CFL would theoretically displace up to twenty incandescent lamps.
The SLS25 generally retails for about $5.00 and the cost of twenty 100-watt soft white incandescents would likely exceed this. Our reference CFL would consume 375 kWh over its normal life, whereas the accumulated total of our twenty incandescents would come in four times higher. In my case, the potential monetary savings are $120.00, provided electricity rates remain constant over the life of the lamp.
From a resource perspective, if one considers the amount of glass, tungsten, aluminium, lead and argon/krypton that would be consumed in the manufacture of twenty incandescent lamps, plus the related consumer packaging, shipping materials and transportation costs (both weight and volume), I wouldn't be surprised if our CFL comes out ahead. Given that the operating savings are in excess of 1,000 kWh, this alone should tell us energy life costs are substantially lower.
In the case of Nova Scotia Power, each kWh of electricity results in the release of 11.2 grams of SO2, 2.57 grams of NOx, 857 grams of CO2 and 0.023 mg of mercury. Over the course of its life, this CFL would potentially eliminate up to 12.6 kg of SO2, 2.9 kg of NOx, 964 kg of CO2 and 25.9 grams of mercury from the waste stream. [The amount of mercury released into the environment is almost ten times what is contained inside this CFL, and unlike the mercury within the CFL which can be recycled or securely disposed, the mercury emitted by coal fired plants indiscriminately pollutes our air, soil and water.] There are other savings related to the mining and transportation of about a half a tonne of thermal coal.
Lastly, if each kW of incremental demand costs our utility $2,000.00 or more in new plant and related T&D, each CFL could potentially reduce future capital expenditures by $150.00.
The NRC analysis is valuable but, unfortunately, the numbers are four years out of date and as you appreciate, a lot has changed in the energy marketplace since then. I think it's safe to say heating oil costs in Canada have increased at a rate far beyond that of electricity. In the case of Nova Scotia, electricity is 28 per cent more expensive than in 2003 while, during this same timeframe, fuel oil costs have almost doubled.
In addition, the minimum HSPF of air source heat pumps has increased from 6.8 to 7.7 and these higher efficiency standards have helped to propel the entire industry forward (e.g., my new heat pump has a HSPF of 11).
With heating oil currently selling at $0.889 per litre, the pay back on my ductless heat pump is 3.5 years and if my home's thermal losses were higher, the pay back would be even shorter (i.e., higher heat demand would mean my heat pump would offset even more fuel oil).
Even here in Canada, a conventional air-source heat pump will provide two to three times more heat, per kWh, than a standard incandescent lamp. And if the heat generated from the operation of incandescent lamps reduces the run time of my heat pump, my heating costs go up, not down.
Question for UK readers.
I periodically check a UK dealer in LEDs to see what new products have been developed and what price points are.
http://www.ultraleds.co.uk/
They currently have a graphic that states "Beat the 2008 Government Ban". What ban are they talking about ?
Best Hopes for Energy Efficiency,
Alan
The comparable USA site I also go to (and buy from) is:
http://www.superbrightleds.com
So many things are being banned it's hard to tell ;)
Could be related to mercury in CFLs, the EU are keen to eliminate mercury. There is also a proposal to ban manufacture of incandescents, but I don't know of a timeframe.
Alan, here you go:
http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/2007/09/ban_the_bulb.html
Attempts to ban incandescent bulbs from 2008+
wow (0)(0)
Banning Edison bulbs because they're not effecient enough.....
In the US what are they going to do about all those space and radiant heaters that run on electricity? Or electric stoves?
One would hope that oil filled space heaters would take off here in Iowa, given that we have excellent wind resources shut in by lack of long distance transmission lines.
One $2,500 investment would pretty much free us from heating bills and I itch to get this done ...
Not a cure everywhere, but blanket policies are generally not such a good idea. I think the incandescent bulb ban *is* a good thing, as it only troubles the maker of the EasyBake stove ...
Places around my house where I don't use CFL bulbs:
- Inside my kitchen stove (gas): Too hot
- Inside my fridge and freezer: Too cold
- In the motion sensor controlled security lights outside the house: Too cold in winter to provide enough light quickly
- In my photographic darkroom: They give off enough light to fog film for 3-5 minutes after you switch them off due to residual glow from the phosphor
- In various task lamps that right now use 12 Volt halogen bulbs: Not available in that size or brightness
- In dimmer equipped fixtures: even the "dimmable" CFL's don't work as promised; lifespan of less than a dozen hours in some cases, audible buzzing, non-smooth dimming and unequal brightness in multi-bulb fixtures
- In my workshop: they have a strobe effect which sometimes makes things like spinning saw blades and grinder wheels seem stationary or slow moving when in fact they are not. Very unsafe!
Please just tax them lots to discourage use where they are not needed but don't ban them outright. All lighting methods are not yet equal in ways that do matter
Not to mention that they are not inherently worse either. USAGE of the bulb determines how wasteful they are over type. I have seen way to many people get the cfl bulbs only to leave them on all the time.
Agreed
I see misplaced animositiy towards CFLs though from certain conservative quarters as if saving electricity is a sin or something. Most anti CFL people seem to be anti AGW theory too.
All I know is that I replaced all my general lighting incadescents with CFLs and cut my electric bills by 10% this summer. So I like them!
cfl's are great 'only' if your one of those people committed to cutting your light usage as well. i have seen to many people in my area just replace normal light bulbs with them but leave the new ones on all the time thinking that no matter how much you use them they will still always be better then the wast full incondesents.
this is true though. You seem to be confused, the CFL may cost 1-2 $/bulb, but will last 10x longer and with 1/3rd the energy requirement, therefore so long as regular lightbulbs do not cost less than 1/30 the cost of a CFL, you win with a purchase of a CFL (in monitary terms) regardless of the use.
If you are worried about heating, insulate your home. Best investment you can make.
Uh, no.
Let's take a 30W CFL against a 100W incandescent. Assume the CFL lasts 2 years @ $4, and the incan lasts 3 months @ $1, with electricity going for $0.10/kWh.
Assuming you use the light for 8 hours a day - ~3000/yr - the CFL will cost $11/yr ($9 in electricity + $2 in replacement), vs. $34 for the incan ($30 in electricity + $4 in replacement). So the CFL is a huge win in normal use.
However, if you did the silly "keep the light on all the time" thing for a light that was rarely used before, you could certainly end up spending more. If the light was normally used only 2 hours/day, the incan would be $12/yr, whereas the CFL - used 24 hours/day - would be $29/yr.
So usage matters; indeed, usage is practically all that matters - you can see here how little the purchase price of the bulbs matters compared to the electricity costs.
Won't they have to be ethanol-filled space heaters?
/sarcanol
Hi SCT,
Just a note, since I didn't see an address for you. You asked a question on Nov. 27, and I just offered a reply this evening (Dec. 2). (I say this because I took it as a sincere question, and I had some thoughts.) http://www.theoildrum.com/node/3293#comment-272124
Well, I see a couple of different perspectives, so a quick overview.
Things are 'banned' all the time in the Europe - and Europeans know any number of ways how to get around the bans. For example, when Telekom in Germany used to license everything hooked up to their phone network, only Telekom approved answering machines or wireless phones could be purchased - unless the unit you bought was for 'export only.' Another way around a ban is all the exceptions which will be written into the law.
However, as for banning incandescent bulbs - their efficiency is poor, and whether this meets either doomer or cornucopian approval, efficiency is going to be a major aspect of how we will be dealing with things for the next several decades. Whether this efficiency will be enlightened (LEDs replacing CF replacing incandescent, etc. - with LEDs being very practical to use in a PV framework) or brutal (the person with a woodburning stove that burns less wood will freeze more slowly than someone with an open fireplace) is a separate issue.
As for using electricity for heating - well, it has its place in terms of using baseload in a practical manner. Generally, electric heating done ovrnight is fairly cost effective, unless you guess wrong about the next day's weather - the German systems I'm most familiar with simply store the heat in bricks. Newer systems use floor heating, but I don't think they are as efficient in baseload terms.
But there is a strange aspect in terms of incandescents - they are part of your heating, the same way a refrigerator is. Essentially, a kilowatt powering the lights is a kilowatt of heat.
This is why efficiency and conservation have to be very carefully considered. More efficient lighting may lead to higher heating requirements, which actually may mean that the efficiency increase is improved, as burning natural gas directly for heat is much more efficient than burning it for generating electricity. (During the first energy crisis, Fairfax County opened its new administration building - which was designed to have the lights on 24 hours a day, as part of its heating system. Obviously, this was seen as remarkably wasteful at the time, but actually, it wasn't that bad - not counting summer, of course - except that having a 10 story building lit up continuously seemed a beacon of wastefulness when conservation was considered necessary.)
But whether such an increase in efficiency can actually be called conservation is another matter - after all, natural gas is still being burned. But using LEDs with a PV/battery system, and adding home insulation, may lead to a reduction in both terms of electricity use and in terms of natural gas use - but in this case, the efficiency of LEDs and home insulation have nothing to do with one another at all. Except for allowing people to live comfortably within a framework which is at least potentially sustainable.
The EU, whose citizens in general have more faith in communal solutions to communal problems, is attempting to change things through regulation, without waiting for people to decide it is their self-interest to do so, or for various industries to approve their profits being reduced or eliminated. And the EU, being run by people, will make its share of human mistakes, which is accepted here. America is different. There, it seems, only government mistakes are considered true mistakes.
As a sidenote - 10 years ago, according to a radio report, the most commonly shoplifted item in Germany was CF bulbs. Which actually makes sense - at the time, not only did they cost a lot, but stealing them would lead to fairly substantial long term savings for the thief. I always imagined that most of the thiefs were grandparents, widows, pensioners, etc.
Some very good points, Expat (as usual)
Here in Portland, we've had, for December 1, an exceptionally cold (20f), Windy and Sunny day, where my house could have been entirely Heated by any of a number of Solar Heating options, like these Solar Hot Air Panels that are under construction in the basement.. as well as a good amount of Windpower, which certainly could have just been directly wired to Incandescents inside, producing both heat and light without the losses of batteries and related circuitry. Even the food we are cooking on our electric range is using the heat twice during this season, making the stove a good bit more economical in wintertime.
Of course, the use of Electric Lighting AT ALL during a bright sunny day is a bit of legacy foolishness that I also aim to dismantle with a system that starts with a Tracked-Mirror atop each of my Three Disused ChimneyShafts, providing a constant beam of nearly full sunlight down through the entire depth of the 3story, 3-Apartment building, wherein each floor can 'dip' a mirror into a designated pie-slice of that light, to be directed into the room along the ceiling to where-ever it is needed, diffused, split, filtered, lensed or reflected into useful forms..
I'm not all that impressed by the light that comes from these solar 'light-tubes' that I see installed here and there. As a Lighting Cameraman, I can safely say that diffusing your light source too early in its path will cost you a LOT of lightcandles down the line, and the Light tubes are often difuse both at the roof as well as at the outlet.. (Don't even talk to me about rediffusing difuse sources, you get bupkiss out the back end!) Tracking a mirror barely takes any energy, and the complexity is pretty low. Like most Alt-energy, just takes initial investment and design-time.. climbing on my roof is gravy. It's as close to an extreme sport as I've got.
http://www.redrok.com/electron.htm#led3x
Bob Fiske
(oops.. sun is down! Gotta get the insulated shades pulled)
What I especially love: Go into any office, and under the desks of many (most?) of the female clerical workers you will find little electric heaters, heating the air that the air conditioners have cooled. . . because the heaters have heated it. . . because the a/c has cooled it. . . because the heaters have heated it . . . because the a/c has cooled it. . . etc.
An endless feedback loop. Kunstler could have a LOT of fun writing about that one.
I don't know. There's talk about strongly encouraging not using filament bulbs by voluntarily not stocking them, eg,
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/labour2007/story/0,,2178187,00.html
but that's not an actual ban and I haven't really heard much about it in the media. (Mind you, I tend to tune it out energy efficiency from bulbs because whether a given illumination bulb dissipates 100W or 9W makes little difference if it's not switched on.)
Alan - since you are talking about LEDs, I'm going to go out on a limb and say it's a ban on the really bright ones that "trick my ride" types like to put into their car headlights.
LED headlights are great, but too-bright ones are a danger to other drivers, and by a certain time in 08 British police may start writing tickets, perhaps expensive ones, for using them in your car.
I don't think you have to worry about Brit DOT regulations keeping you from buying bright white LEDs.
It's a ban on incandesent light bulbs and at the lattitude and climate of the UK it is totally bizarre, since we mostly need HEAT as well when we need artificial light.
In the non-FF future we will need our energy from alternate sources (wind, wave, solar PV etc) and these mostly create electricity - so we will need to heat from electricity as well.
A very simple, easy to recycle, low cost, non poluting device for heating with electricity, that anybody can service if it fails, is the incandesent lamp - and you get the light for free!
The stuff we will be forced to buy are typically 5 to 10 times the price, complex, difficult to recycle and contain heavy metals such as mercury, and to cap it all, most current designs don't give adequate light since they are not a point source.
Xeroid - better words were never spoken.
A person can make Edison bulbs in a garage workshop. They can be made to last a LONG time too.
In the early days of radio some were blowing their own tubes.
But the new solutions all seem to be complicated, take tons of high-tech machinery and computing power, exotic materials, etc.
My solution lately has been to acquire a used bicycle (and fished another out of a dumpster for parts) and get a small motorbike that gets better mileage than my Prius did.
There's something about our culture that's really attracted to complex, techie, solutions to really simple problems.
Well said. My Prius is a gas guzzler. I ride my bike everywhere despite the strange looks. I'm 44. I substitute one trip a day going by bike.
Today I saw only the second bike at the gym I can remember.
It's so sad.
On a funny note, the Personal Trainer at the gym just bought this huge hummer (redundant) to drive 3 or 4 miles to the gym. It's only 5 miles from one side to the other, but I'll give her a break. It's California weather and the town is completely flat.
It's really sad when you think about it.
Aaargh,#$%@*&!!!, This is a perfect example of the the kind of (take your pick) arrogant ostentation or clueless ignorance that is so prevalent among the citizens of this me, me, me society. I no longer have the link but someone once sent me a series of photos titled "Only in America" one of them happened to be of a gym somewhere in LA with two escalators going up on either side of the stairs to the front entrance. Of course there was no one on the stairs and both escalators had people on them with their gym bags!!!??? BTW I'm 54 years old and actually am able to speed walk 3 miles in about 40 minutes if I run I can do it in a little over 30 mins. you can estimate my 5 mile speed. Ok, I have a girl friend who is in training for a half marathon and she regularly runs 5ks (3 miles) and I often accompany her during training. We also do 15 mile bike rides. There is absolutely no excuse for someone to buy and drive a Hummer for trips to the gym or anywhere else for that matter unless, they have their cephalus inserted really far up their anus.
During the non heating season, the incandescent bulb wastes energy, when you add in the source multiplier for the electrical generation, CFL's or better yet, LED's make a lot of sense.
Just as the common refrigerator
does. ;)
How does the fridge do on the
energy generation calculation ?
Refrigerators have come a long way recently on energy efficiency, thus they generate a lot less heat. I contend that with much more efficient household appliances and lighting we will have to rethink our heating degree day formula of the average daily temperature from 65 degrees F. When doing energy calculations for my own house I use 68 F as the working number because of cfl's and energy star appliances.
fridges are probably #1 or 2 on the electricity requirements for a house. #1 is typically the sum of all powered off devices, and #2 is the fridge or drier depending on the month.
We recently bought a new A+ energy rated fridge freezer. It has a problem: the fridge door occasionally swings ajar.
I discovered this when I came to get out the butter one day which is close to the fridge lights (2x15W). it was melted!
THe fridge door had come open a little and the lights had come on. The 15W lights and the door being open overcame the fridges cooling ability and spoiled the food.
This all got me thinking: Why sell an A+ rated fridge with incandescent lights in it? Whenever they are on they pour heat into the fridge which then has to be extracted at further energy cost.
I unscrewed the bulbs and even when the door occasionally slips ajar, the butter stays cold.
I recommend this treatment of the fridge if you have adequate ambient light to see inside it.
Eventually it occurred to me to fit 2 low power LED spotlights into the mini screw cap fitting. They stick out from the fittings like Shrek's ears and illuminate the sides of the fridge in pleasingly cold-looking blueish light.
Unfortunately the plastic splash cover no longer fits so it has had to go into storage.
I have had plenty of problems with 240V LED lights burning out but I think the ones in the fridge will last a long time because a: lights not used much, b: low ambient temperature reduces the risk of thermal runaway and burnout of the diodes.
The other fridge defect (yes, I think incandescent light in a fridge are a defect) is the self-opening door. I think I might put a buzzer in parallel to the fridge lights so that there is an alarm when the lights come on. Might lean the whole device back a couple of degrees by chocking up the front on wood or something.
If any fridge designers / manufacturers are listening: LED lighting is the way to go in efficient fridges. Fairly obvious I would have thought!
Carbon - Coventry, UK
We routinely use wide masking tape to provide an extra level of insurance on keeping the freezer door of our refrigerator shut. We usually have our freezer section quite jam packed, so occasionally the door wants to top open a crack. The tape assures that this doesn't happen.
Resistive electric heating, whether it is from a baseboard heater, a bulb, or a refrigerator, is very inefficient.
It is far more efficient to run a heat pump or to burn the fuel directly to make heat.
At the lattitude of the UK, when we have the non-heating season the day length is long so we hardly need lighting at all as, when it is dark, we are mostly asleep.
Most of the energy we use in domestic situations is for heat.
The payback time on these expensive lamps and heat pumps is years and years. So, it's much better to spend the limited money available on better insulation, then much less energy for heating is required. It is far more efficient to not need to use fossil fuel at all.
We don't need to reduce electrical use, we need to reduce all fossil fuel use - oil, coal, and gas - this is the government's mistake, they wrongly think electricity is the total energy.
Payback on CFL's is 1 year IIRC.
You are correct with insulation however, it is the biggest saver.
Try "months and months".
The energy savings over the course of one year with a CFL vs. regular is around $30. At roughly $3 for a bulb, the payback time for compact fluorescent is only a month or two.
Heat pumps take longer, but based on this analysis, an air-source heat pump added to either an oil furnace or electrical resistance will take 2-7 years to pay back across a wide range of climatic conditions.
Often true, yes. Both is even better, though, and the economics seems fairly favourable.
True, but converting to electricity can be an effective way to do that, since electricity can be generated from non-fossil sources. That's especially valid in countries where most electricity is non-fossil-derived (e.g., Canada, France).
No, not necessarily.
If you still have to provide the heat that would have been provided by the old lamps than there is no saving in energy at all, so your costings are incorrect - in fact I would guarantee that more energy and exotic materials have been used in CFLs.
If you use a CFL then all you have done is bought a much more expensive and less usable and eventually more polluting way of producing light.
I do use CFLs - the government insists that energy companies give some away for free, there are loads available if you know where to look - but then I have insulated my house (with government financial help) have solar panels for hot water (with government financial help) and heat with gas, which at the moment is much cheaper than electricity - and constantly switch off lights where not required.
Sure...if the building's only source of heat is electrical resistive, and is never off when the lights are on, and is bolted to the ceiling. I'd wager the number of buildings that describes is approximately zero, though.
For a building with any non-resistive heating - whether oil/gas furnace or heat pump - then using light bulbs for heat is simply enormously inefficient in comparison.
For a building where the heat doesn't need to be on constantly - and that's almost every building for months and months, even in the UK - the extra heat from light bulbs is simply wasted.
Finally, heat rises, meaning heating up a small patch of air at the ceiling isn't going to do much to help the occupants of the room. There's a reason heating elements are virtually always low - it's more efficient in terms of how the room feels.
So for 99.9% of buildings, CFL will save substantial amounts of energy and money.
The problem is most people in the UK don't have enough money to insulate their properties properly because limited funds are available despite government grants.
Heat is heat at whatever height in the room it is inserted - the air in the room mixes.
We have got to heat our properties with electricty in the future as other alternatives won't be available - and electricity will likely be in short supply. We have to migrate from FF fast.
Energy reducing expenditure needs to be prioritised as the funds available are so limited - massive amounts of CFL isn't good prioritisation and for most people in the UK probably will not save money, even in the long term.
We hardly have any heat pumps in the UK and compared to adequate insulation their cost is massively more - if we have enough insulation we don't need the complexity of heat pumps at all! They will need replacing/servicing regularly, insulation won't.
In the UK in the summer months we don't need much of either artificial heat or light. We either need both or none.
A Philips SLS25 CFL produces 1,750 lumens of light, consumes 25-watts and has a rated service life of 15,000 hours. The equivalent 120-volt, 100-watt A19 soft white incandescent provides 1,620 lumens and has a service life of just 750 hours. Assuming each of these lamps achieves full maturity, our CFL would theoretically displace up to twenty incandescent lamps.
The SLS25 generally retails for about $5.00 and the cost of twenty 100-watt soft white incandescents would likely exceed this. Our reference CFL would consume 375 kWh over its normal life, whereas the accumulated total of our twenty incandescents would come in four times higher. In my case, the potential monetary savings are $120.00, provided electricity rates remain constant over the life of the lamp.
From a resource perspective, if one considers the amount of glass, tungsten, aluminium, lead and argon/krypton that would be consumed in the manufacture of twenty incandescent lamps, plus the related consumer packaging, shipping materials and transportation costs (both weight and volume), I wouldn't be surprised if our CFL comes out ahead. Given that the operating savings are in excess of 1,000 kWh, this alone should tell us energy life costs are substantially lower.
In the case of Nova Scotia Power, each kWh of electricity results in the release of 11.2 grams of SO2, 2.57 grams of NOx, 857 grams of CO2 and 0.023 mg of mercury. Over the course of its life, this CFL would potentially eliminate up to 12.6 kg of SO2, 2.9 kg of NOx, 964 kg of CO2 and 25.9 grams of mercury from the waste stream. [The amount of mercury released into the environment is almost ten times what is contained inside this CFL, and unlike the mercury within the CFL which can be recycled or securely disposed, the mercury emitted by coal fired plants indiscriminately pollutes our air, soil and water.] There are other savings related to the mining and transportation of about a half a tonne of thermal coal.
Lastly, if each kW of incremental demand costs our utility $2,000.00 or more in new plant and related T&D, each CFL could potentially reduce future capital expenditures by $150.00.
Cheers,
Paul
Hi Pitt,
The NRC analysis is valuable but, unfortunately, the numbers are four years out of date and as you appreciate, a lot has changed in the energy marketplace since then. I think it's safe to say heating oil costs in Canada have increased at a rate far beyond that of electricity. In the case of Nova Scotia, electricity is 28 per cent more expensive than in 2003 while, during this same timeframe, fuel oil costs have almost doubled.
In addition, the minimum HSPF of air source heat pumps has increased from 6.8 to 7.7 and these higher efficiency standards have helped to propel the entire industry forward (e.g., my new heat pump has a HSPF of 11).
Cheers,
Paul
With heating oil currently selling at $0.889 per litre, the pay back on my ductless heat pump is 3.5 years and if my home's thermal losses were higher, the pay back would be even shorter (i.e., higher heat demand would mean my heat pump would offset even more fuel oil).
Even here in Canada, a conventional air-source heat pump will provide two to three times more heat, per kWh, than a standard incandescent lamp. And if the heat generated from the operation of incandescent lamps reduces the run time of my heat pump, my heating costs go up, not down.
Cheers,
Paul