where does all the electricity go

TallPaul1878 said:
There isn't anything. Without going into the climate science argument and all the hysteria that comes with it. There is no reason to support they waste of anything at all anyway. You wouldn't cook a whole sack of potatoes if you only wanted to have 1 baked potato would you?
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I'm not really sure what you're getting at - someone made a claim and I was just interested in what there was to support that claim... if energy efficient lightbulbs are actually a waste of money in the UK then that is something interesting to look into I'd have thought.

This doesn't need to have anything to do with Climate change - whether people accept climate change or not the question of whether energy efficient lightbulbs are a good idea in terms of saving energy in the UK is unchanged.
 
dowie said:
I'm not really sure what you're getting at - someone made a claim and I was just interested in what there was to support that claim... if energy efficient lightbulbs are actually a waste of money in the UK then that is something interesting to look into I'd have thought.

This doesn't need to have anything to do with Climate change - whether people accept climate change or not the question of whether energy efficient lightbulbs are a good idea in terms of saving energy in the UK is unchanged.
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I'm sorry I didn't see where you were going on this one. I'm guilty of not reading into a post properly at times.

Well energy saving light bulbs do in fact save energy. Over the course of a year in millions of houses then a lot of energy is saved. That's electricity that didn't need to be paid for, fuel that didn't need to be consumed.

From an environmental standpoint that's a good result. But financially, the energy saved per home is minimal really when considering the increased cost of an energy saving light bulb.

I'm sorry that I don't have figures at hand for you but fundamentally you don't use energy saving bulbs to save money. IIRC I think it's something like for every £10 saved in electric costs it only really amounts to £3 when other factors are considered.

There are too many contributing factors. A traditional bulb might produce a bit more heat but you'd need a home with excellent insulation to trap enough excess heat for that to even register with the thermostat.
 
dowie said:
I understand what the pov/claim was - I was just interested if there was anything to support it? Thus the question of whether someone has worked through this somewhere and shown that they don't actually save energy overall because of some heating aspect of regular bulbs or whether this is just something you've thought of which may well not be correct? I mean the heating aspect could well be negligible relative to the energy savings from low energy bulbs.
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I would have thought regardless of if the net energy balance isn't actually improved by energy saving bulbs, you would still gain a decent national saving to electricity consumption versus gas consumption from the supposed additional heating requirements, the former of which I believe is under more pressure to maintain output.
 
dowie said:
I'm not really sure what you're getting at - someone made a claim and I was just interested in what there was to support that claim... if energy efficient lightbulbs are actually a waste of money in the UK then that is something interesting to look into I'd have thought.

This doesn't need to have anything to do with Climate change - whether people accept climate change or not the question of whether energy efficient lightbulbs are a good idea in terms of saving energy in the UK is unchanged.
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*Takes envelope out*

Say you need your average 5000 BTUs to heat your average British lounge, with no ceiling to floor windows or French windows into the garden. Also say we're using everyone's favourite 60W bulbs in that lounge.

5002.47 = (60*0.978)*3.41*25

Dropping all complaints about the efficiency and failure rates (in this case the more inefficient, the more heat we get but also high pop rates) of said bulbs vs radiators, we would need to set up 25 of said bulbs around the lounge to pump the thermal equivalent of heat into it. This is not the most likely number of bulbs in a room of this type nor indeed in most people's houses, not forgetting that larger houses with more bulbs also tend to have larger volumes to heat and more window area. So, you've probably stumbled upon one more GD gem. A fun optimisation problem would be to see the minimum bulbs needed for a tolerable room temp at the lowest possible cost and bulb replacement rate.

Over to you chaps!
 
Ignoring the fact that has central heating is 1/3 of the cost of electricity going into a light bulb.
 
i think people have said but in the end it all goes to heat i suppose - all the light gets absorbed then goes to heat, all the kinetic energy goes to heat etc
 
I'll light my house using the technology specifically designed to convert as much energy into light as possible, and heat it with a system designed to convert as much energy into heat as possible. That seems to be the most sensible way to approach the two problems.
 
Orionaut said:
All The energy used in light bulbs eventually goes to heat.

It may not be quite as effective as a dedicated heater in the short term since the heat mostly will go to the ceiling in any given room. But in a standard house lights used downstairs will heat the upstairs and if the lights are left on for a long time eventually the ceiling will radiate the heat back down into the room.

The only time where low eergy light fittings will actually save energy in the UK is at times of year when there is no need for background heat, IE during those 3 months or so of the year that people in the UK sometimes describe as "Summer".

Of course, people living in warmer climates will make significant benefits from these sorts of "Energy saving" technologies.

And because of the structuring of the pricing of different fuels and time dependent charging rates, there may well be money savings to be made.

But the fundamental "Green" energy saving argument is really rather marginal. At least in high latitudes anyway.
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gas is cheaper than electricity.

so yes you need the same amount of energy to heat a home. however with gas being cheaper it makes financial sense to try and reduce electricity costs and convert them into gas costs instead.

you aren't "saving energy" per se but you are saving money.

in summer you would be saving energy too when heating isn't needed but light is.

you will also be saving energy any time you require light but not heating. for instance my heating turns off 1 hour before i leave the house in the morning so i'm no longer heating my home. i still need light to do stuff like get ready, etc. so i'm saving energy there whereas if i had normal bulbs i would be wasting energy as i don't require the heat (because i'm leaving the house to go to work so i don't need the house to be warm) but i require the light.

so yeah energy saving light bulbs do work. you would be literally t throwing money away by not having them. unless you have solar energy and battery storage. even then that energy could be better used elsewhere more efficiently. for example what happens if someone leaves a light on by mistake? also have you thought about outdoor lighting. you would be stupid to be using halogen bulbs outdoors when LED is available as all the heat and energy is going being dispersed outside and not heating your home.

would like to hear your counter arguments to the above.
 
dowie said:
I'm not really sure what you're getting at - someone made a claim and I was just interested in what there was to support that claim... if energy efficient lightbulbs are actually a waste of money in the UK then that is something interesting to look into I'd have thought.

This doesn't need to have anything to do with Climate change - whether people accept climate change or not the question of whether energy efficient lightbulbs are a good idea in terms of saving energy in the UK is unchanged.
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see above

they aren't a waste of money. unless your buying the fancy ones with all the gimmicks like changing colour @ £50 per bulb. buy the cheapest ones that work that use the least energy for the most light.
 
TallPaul1878 said:
I'm sorry I didn't see where you were going on this one. I'm guilty of not reading into a post properly at times.

Well energy saving light bulbs do in fact save energy. Over the course of a year in millions of houses then a lot of energy is saved. That's electricity that didn't need to be paid for, fuel that didn't need to be consumed.

From an environmental standpoint that's a good result. But financially, the energy saved per home is minimal really when considering the increased cost of an energy saving light bulb.

I'm sorry that I don't have figures at hand for you but fundamentally you don't use energy saving bulbs to save money. IIRC I think it's something like for every £10 saved in electric costs it only really amounts to £3 when other factors are considered.

There are too many contributing factors. A traditional bulb might produce a bit more heat but you'd need a home with excellent insulation to trap enough excess heat for that to even register with the thermostat.
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LED bulbs cost pennies. check out screwfix you can get like packs of 5 for a few quid.
 
If you save money by using less energy on an efficient means of producing light.. you can then go spend that money on a more efficient means of producing heat than a light bulb.
 
Orionaut said:
Which is why, in a temperate climate like the UK where back ground heating is desirable for a good part of the year, nonsense like low energy light-bulbs is mostly nonsense....

(Because variable charging rates/fuel costs, they might save some money, but they wont save very much energy. The Green argument is mostly bogus...)
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You are arguing against mathematics.

Good luck to you.
 
All light bulbs also emit RF energy, some more than others. I still have some rooms using 150 watt filament bulbs as they are instant on, give some heat energy and are easy on the eye. The early generation "low energy" ones are a joke, slow warm up, poor life, despite the blurb, make a smell, and support the Greens. The number of Greens I know that have their places and persons riddled with unnecessary electricity guzzling gizmos is risible. The electric car ones are the worst! Worry not about climate change, worry about those economic migrants who fancy a western lifestyle, shunning cooking a wild animal over an open wood fire they have caught on foot ;)
 
The early generation are poor and slow, but some of us move with the times and have the latest generation LED not fluorescents. ;)

They aren’t either. Instant on, high CRI, very low energy and no/non perceivable flicker. The issue is they’re usually a bit more expensive than your average cheap LED.

And at least if those migrants aren’t killing wildlife anymore that wildlife may not become extinct. The earth would be a very unhappy place if the rest of the world bread as fast as native Brits over the last few hundred years. :p

On an unrelated note what gets me is how you can have mains electricity going on one side, lighting up a bulb and then being earthed on the other end.

Try doing that with a battery and the circuit wouldn’t be complete, and no lit bulb.
 
platinum87 said:
You are arguing against mathematics.

Good luck to you.
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And you are arguing against thermodynamics. Good luck to you ;):D

Consider the following scenario.

You are in a room being maintained at 21C by a thermostatically controlled electric heater.

You have an "Old" type light-bulb rated at 100 Watts and you are gaming on a rig that consumes 500 watts.

You stop gaming. and switch off the computer

Then you switch off the light.

What happens to the heater? How much energy has been "saved" by stopping gaming and switching off the light...?


I am not "Opposed" to low energy light bulbs (Or anything else for that matter). But I am opposed to the compulsion that denied us the choice.Before the "Ban" came in I used 150 watt lights (200 if I could get them) and a dimmer in my living room, mostly I used them dimmed.

I was already using (And had done for many years, decades even!) low energy light bulbs for porch and outside lighting, but I continued to use filiment bulbs in my living troom because that was what I wanted to use...!

The first gen CFL's only gave half the light and were not dimmable so I had to replace my dimmer switch and put up with insufficient light when I wanted to do housework and too much when I wanted to watch TV.



The current LED ones are a lot better, but they still haven't caught up with the light output that I had originally.

You can get CFLs of a suitable brightness but they are commercial grow lights and not very pretty


Chris Wilson said:
those economic migrants who fancy a western lifestyle,
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It is certainly true that the biggest growth pressure, by far, on increasing energy and resource consumption in the developed word is the increase in population as a result of people migrating from low energy economies to high energy ones and then having large families . US/European populations would have stablised at much lower levels decades ago were it not for this.

Whilst a stable, but aging (Or even shrinking ) population seems to brig economists out in a cold sweat, the problems are not insurmountable and actually, the worst possible thing one could do is import more people to make up the perceived "Shortfall". Doing so is basically ponzi scheme of the very worst sort
 
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