Light Bulbs To Be Made Illegal

[GRG55]

Re: Light Bulbs To Be Made Illegal

Modern incandescent light bulbs generate ~95% of their energy as heat or thermal energy with only 5% of the energy emitted as visible light. Considering their inefficiency they produce an amazing amount of light.

In modern work spaces where most lighting is used, incandescent lights were discarded long ago in favor of fluorescent bulbs. The T8 standard provides the same light as an incandescent light bulb while using about 25% the energy. There are no building owners using incandescent lighting. It costs too much and the life cycle is too short.

LED commercial lighting is just now coming on board as is ~40% more efficient than T8 fluorescent and uses about 15% the energy required by incandescent bulbs.

It's true that incandescents are much more efficient providers of heat than they are providers of light. A 100 watt incandescent light bulb consumes 1 kWh of electricity in 10 hours or 2.4 kWh if left on 24 hours a day. When converted to BTUs, a common measure of heat energy, this translates to ~8,000 BTU per day or over a million BTUs during the winter heating season.

Although it wouldn't be as pleasant as a fireplace or a wood stove one could turn on about 80, 100 watt incandescent bulbs in an average home and use this as an alternate heat source. More if you live in Buffalo, NY, less if you live in South Florida.

Of course you'd have to pack all your lights away in late spring and switch of CFL or LED lighting to keep your energy use to a minimum.

Finster's point is well taken in that the great majority of energy used in a home is thermal energy. Either heating or cooling a home. Light energy is important in commercial buildings but no one had to legislate the use of low power consumption lighting, building owners made economic choices to change their lighting.

One of the major costs in commercial office spaces is not related to the direct energy used by the lighting device. It's the fact that in most climates the HVAC system is doing cooling duty year round during the daytime. In commercial office space the HVAC system has to continuously reject the heat load from the high concentration of people in the building during the daytime. The heat from lighting raises that cost, and therefore flourescents have a significant cost saving beyond the direct power consumption decrease.

[santafe2]

Re: Light Bulbs To Be Made Illegal

One of the major costs in commercial office spaces is not related to the direct energy used by the lighting device. It's the fact that in most climates the HVAC system is doing cooling duty year round during the daytime. In commercial office space the HVAC system has to continuously reject the heat load from the high concentration of people in the building during the daytime. The heat from lighting raises that cost, and therefore flourescents have a significant cost saving beyond the direct power consumption decrease.

A tactic used by building owners to save money on their energy bill is to time shift energy usage. That is, move as much of the HVAC energy requirement to the 10PM-6AM time period. They do this in several ways but one of the most prevalent is the use of chillers. Think of them as huge ice machines. They run all night and produce a thermal storage system - ice.

As cooling is required during the day, this stored thermal cooling is used to lower the mid-day energy requirements of the building. Unfortunately, the whole process uses more energy than would be required if energy was not being moved from one state to another before being consumed.

The building owners do this where utilities, most notably California utilities, charge for energy by time period. Energy consumed at 4PM during the week is 2-3X as expensive as energy consumed in the evening or on weekends.

Since utilities are in the business of selling energy, the fact that the building owner is using more energy is not an issue for them. The utilities are most interested in incenting all customers to use less "peak" energy. Utilities are designed to handle peak power and the more they can smooth power requirements the less infrastructure it requires.

[Spartacus]

Re: Light Bulbs To Be Made Illegal

About time and good riddance.

Those things are evil.

If God had meant man to stay awake at night our butts would glow in the dark, like the firefly.































Why is this in news? Wouldn't Rants be better?

[mcgurme]

Re: Light Bulbs To Be Made Illegal

This point bears extra emphasis if you're using air conditioning, because that not only neutralizes, but reverses, the whole energy equation. During cooling season, every unit of energy you burn in the house takes additional energy to be pumped back out.

This is where CFL and LEF lighting really ... uhm ... shines...

Actually, using CFL and LEF year round is beneficial for those who use heat pumps in the wintertime, which is a significant number of people in the Southeast.

A heat pump is a thermal transfer device, and hence it is at least 2-fold more efficient at turning electricity into heat in the wintertime than direct electrical heating (which is what a lightbulb is doing). That's because it transfers heat from outside air (or even better, the ground) into the house. Air conditioning in reverse. Hence, heating with your tungsten bulbs (or any bulb, for that matter) will cost twice as much.

Another consideration: for those who use sources like natural gas for heating - the transfer efficiency of the energy from source (well) to destination is higher than for electricity. Line transmission presents large losses. Natural gas and propane are not nearly so lossy (but not w/o loss, mainly due to the fossil fuels involved in transport).

Nonetheless, I disagree with the government approach on this. I think they should incentivize installation of higher efficiency devices, but not make it illegal to use the inefficient ones if you really insist on it.

[santafe2]

Re: Light Bulbs To Be Made Illegal

Nonetheless, I disagree with the government approach on this. I think they should incentivize installation of higher efficiency devices, but not make it illegal to use the inefficient ones if you really insist on it.

It appears you may be suggesting a carbon tax. That is, judge the environmental damage caused by carbon based energy sources and place an excise tax on these products based on their carbon requirements. This is a popular idea within the renewable energy community but obviously one that is very unpopular with almost everyone in fossil fuel.

For our government to marshal the will to hammer out a compromised agreement on a carbon tax we'll first have to agree that global warming is a critical issue. Since this issue is best understood on a geologic time scale, whatever we decide will most likely be incorrect based on our human time frame.

[Finster]

Re: Light Bulbs To Be Made Illegal

... Why is this in news? Wouldn't Rants be better?

That crossed my mind, Spart, but the bill was just signed and the Bloomberg story was a bona fide news item.

[Finster]

Re: Light Bulbs To Be Made Illegal

Actually, using CFL and LEF year round is beneficial for those who use heat pumps in the wintertime, which is a significant number of people in the Southeast.

A heat pump is a thermal transfer device, and hence it is at least 2-fold more efficient at turning electricity into heat in the wintertime than direct electrical heating (which is what a lightbulb is doing). That's because it transfers heat from outside air (or even better, the ground) into the house. Air conditioning in reverse. Hence, heating with your tungsten bulbs (or any bulb, for that matter) will cost twice as much.

This is of course generally true. Yet there are still millions of homes using heating oil derived from imported crude. And even a heat pump is a whole-house apparatus. Those of us that choose to conserve by focusing on heating only some more-used rooms can still save electricity even if it comes from pure resistance heat.

Nonetheless, I disagree with the government approach on this. I think they should incentivize installation of higher efficiency devices, but not make it illegal to use the inefficient ones if you really insist on it.

This really gets closer to the nub of the issue. The government is attempting to micro-manage with a one-size-fits-all approach. This imposes a rigidity that frustrates the efficiency of our ostensibly resilient and adaptable economy to respond to changing circumstances. Any resourcefulness of individuals like you and I in increasing our energy efficiency is short-circuited.

Incentivization would be a far better approach. To the extent there is a national issue with excessive dependence on foreign oil, why not just increase the import tax? (This has the salutory side effect of either reducing deficits or allowing taxes to be cut elsewhere.) To the extent the concern is emissions of pollutants like carbon dioxide, why not tax those emissions? Then let the genius of a free people and free markets sort out the details.

[jk]

Re: Light Bulbs To Be Made Illegal

This is of course generally true. Yet there are still millions of homes using heating oil derived from imported crude. And even a heat pump is a whole-house apparatus. Those of us that choose to conserve by focusing on heating only some more-used rooms can still save electricity even if it comes from pure resistance heat.



This really gets closer to the nub of the issue. The government is attempting to micro-manage with a one-size-fits-all approach. This imposes a rigidity that frustrates the efficiency of our ostensibly resilient and adaptable economy to respond to changing circumstances. Any resourcefulness of individuals like you and I in increasing our energy efficiency is short-circuited.

Incentivization would be a far better approach. To the extent there is a national issue with excessive dependence on foreign oil, why not just increase the import tax? (This has the salutory side effect of either reducing deficits or allowing taxes to be cut elsewhere.) To the extent the concern is emissions of pollutants like carbon dioxide, why not tax those emissions? Then let the genius of a free people and free markets sort out the details.

markets are inefficient to the extent that they don't account for externalities. that goes for all kinds of pollution, not just carbon, as well as the consequent health damages and quality of life impairments imposed by the untaxed effluents of the use of energy and the production of goods and services. thus appeals to "efficiency" are, in general, misleading because the analyses ignore those same effects that the legal and economic system ignore.

[Finster]

Re: Light Bulbs To Be Made Illegal

markets are inefficient to the extent that they don't account for externalities. that goes for all kinds of pollution, not just carbon, as well as the consequent health damages and quality of life impairments imposed by the untaxed effluents of the use of energy and the production of goods and services. thus appeals to "efficiency" are, in general, misleading because the analyses ignore those same effects that the legal and economic system ignore.

This does not address the point it purports to:

...Incentivization would be a far better approach. To the extent there is a national issue with excessive dependence on foreign oil, why not just increase the import tax? (This has the salutory side effect of either reducing deficits or allowing taxes to be cut elsewhere.) To the extent the concern is emissions of pollutants like carbon dioxide, why not tax those emissions? Then let the genius of a free people and free markets sort out the details.

In fact you can incorporate those "externalities" into the marketplace with appropriate macro policies. That's exactly what things like energy and emission taxes do.

[jk]

Re: Light Bulbs To Be Made Illegal

This does not address the point it purports to:



In fact you can incorporate those "externalities" into the marketplace with appropriate macro policies. That's exactly what things like energy and emission taxes do.

my error. i hadn't noticed your mention of taxing effluents.

[Mn_Mark]

Re: Light Bulbs To Be Made Illegal

No one has mentioned the quality of light. I find fluorescent lights harsh and tiring on the eyes. And I like my living spaces at night, when I want to relax, lighted in a nice soft red-yellow type light like that given off by incandescents. Now we're all supposed to look forward to blinking under flickering blue-white fluorescent lights I suppose. Just like the great improvement from the "low flow" toilets and shower heads, which simply do a horrible job. Have you tried to take a shower in the stinging mist produced by the showerheads in budget motels lately? Horrible. Definitely a decline in quality of life.

And don't talk to me about LEDs if they are anything like the LED light in the new wind-up, no-battery flashlight I got. The harshest blue-white light I've seen yet. Just horrible. If I had to live under that all the time I'd start living like people in pre-industrial times and start burning a kerosene lamp at night I think.

That's what I object to here - busybodies deciding for me that I'm not going to be allowed to spend money to buy and operate incandescent lights anymore. Whether I'm willing to spend the extra money or not on the higher electric bills. Just another indication that liberals don't "get" the idea of free markets and supply and demand. If it were left up to them we would all live in multi-unit housing in the central city and ride government transportation everywhere. Something like the Soviet Union with its rows of egalitarian, efficient cement housing towers. All very "environmentally-friendly" and all quite horrible to live in. And they accuse religious people of being puritans.

I guess I'm going to be stocking up a multi-decade supply of incandescent lightbulbs over the next number of years. Because I can just about guarantee you that in ten years they will be in as much demand on the black market as decent showerheads and decent toilets are now.

[Finster]

Re: Light Bulbs To Be Made Illegal

my error. i hadn't noticed your mention of taxing effluents.

You nevertheless raised a crucial fundamental point. While free markets are extremely efficient at allocating resources to maximize living standards, government has a role to play in ensuring that those markets reflect what you refer to as "externalities".

Air is a prime example. No one produced it, no one owns it. It has traditionally been taken for granted as an unlimited free resource. People could always take from it at apparently zero cost. Remove oxygen, add carbon dioxide, whatever. So long as the total amount of this activity is small enough, no one notices. But as global population doubles and redoubles, we start to notice that it has a cost after all. Every unit of oxygen that is removed from the air and every unit of carbon dioxide that it put in its place by one person is at the expense of others. Is a market that fails to recognize that expense truly a free market that efficiently allocates resources?

Well, we wouldn't argue that a free market allows for someone to poach your garden for vegetables, or to set off bombs in their back yard in the middle of the night and wake up the entire neigborhood, would we?

It seems pretty clear that in order for the free market to work, every player has to bear the real cost of his activity. Otherwise, his incentives are skewed by the appearance of resources that have cost being made to appear to be free.

So my problem with this energy bill isn't based on some anarchist ideology, it's that it tries to bypass the problem-solving process and prescribe micromanaged solutions instead, actually frustrating the ability of the markets to respond to ever-changing circumstances and continually improve efficiency. If government would instead focus on making sure that the economic playing field is level and that real costs are not being omitted from the market calculus, we'd not only save more energy but improve living standards in the process.

[Finster]

Re: Light Bulbs To Be Made Illegal

...

I guess I'm going to be stocking up a multi-decade supply of incandescent lightbulbs over the next number of years. Because I can just about guarantee you that in ten years they will be in as much demand on the black market as decent showerheads and decent toilets are now.

This is another wonderful example of the failure of politicians and bureaucrats to achieve intended results with micromanaged "solutions". The showerheads that have a flow rate 20% less or the toilets that use 30% less per flush not only are less desirable to many consumers, but don't even save the water these weenies claimed they would. Even the people who are stuck with them wind up taking longer showers and flushing the toilet more often. Now comes new standards not only for light bulbs, but cars, washing machines, and dishwashers, just to name the most well publicized. Boiled down to its essence, this "energy bill" is nothing more than a cynical attempt by politicians to appear to be "doing something"; it just turns out that that something is chipping away at the liberty and freedom that made this country great.

[c1ue]

Re: Light Bulbs To Be Made Illegal

Finster,

I feel your pain.

The right solution is to cause a economic consequence to waste.

This would include unsubsidized prices enforced via metering for water, electricity, etc.

Unfortunately there are too many specialized interests combined with insufficient leadership in this country to alleviate this problem.

So much easier to 'green' shop at Whole Foods and buy a Prius.

[DemonD]

Re: Light Bulbs To Be Made Illegal

Finster: another example I remember my dad telling me was about exhaust from coal fired plants. Some EPA restrictions stated that there could only be so many carbon parts per million at a certain atmospheric level.

well duh, the companies built higher smoke stacks.

I agree this energy bill is not really any better than whatever laws and regs were there before. It probably isn't worse, but i'm definitely not a fan of the continued ethanol subsidies it provides for. blech.

at least they made gas mileage a bigger requirement.