10 Ventôse CCXV (February 28, 2007)
There Is A Light That Never Goes Out
There's something that's been making me curious lately. As I'm sure anyone who hasn't been living under a rock has noticed, compact fluorescent bulbs have been getting a lot press time lately. Regardless of your beliefs on global warming, I'm sure one thing can be agreed on: lower power usage (and therefore, lower power bills) are a good thing.
Wait, did I say everyone could agree on that? Whoops. Which gets me to what I'm puzzled by: the "using compact fluorescents is actually going to cause your power bills to increase" crowd. For those who haven't encountered it, the reasoning goes something like this:
- Incandescent lightbulbs are highly inefficient light sources, using up a significant portion of their power requirements in generating something other than light — namely heat
- Compact fluorescents are more efficient light sources than incandescent bulbs, meaning that less of their energy consumption is wasted generating heat.
- Therefore, by switching to CFLs, your heating bill is going to rise significantly.
Of course, this entire theory misses the point that heaters tend to be far more efficient at generating heat than incandescent bulbs — after all, they aren't wasting energy generating light (unless, of course, your heater is — in which case I'd suggest calling a repairman or the fire department). Therefore, any heat actually generated by the bulbs would likely be offset by more efficient heat generation methods (that, and the fact that light bulbs normally aren't left on 24 hours a day).
That, of course, doesn't stop it from getting around. In the past two days I've seen it mentioned both in the letters section of the Gleaner and in comments at Digg. Granted, neither are paragons of intelligent debate (the Gleaner is seems to be in a race to the bottom with the Bruns, and reading Digg comments makes browsing Slashdot at -1 seem like a seem like a source of rational of discussion in comparison), but it's out there.
Were it not winter, I don't think we'd be hearing this argument; who wants to talk about heat generation when everybody is sweating?
I've never heard this argument, which is good, because I don't know if I'd be able to stop myself from punching the person in the face.
My favourite part of having compact fluorescents is that I can get them in daylight colour, eliminating the gross yellow artificialness of incandescent lighting.
I've never actually encountered the opinion in person, but the fact that I've seen it on both Digg and in the Gleaner (two rather disparate sources), suggests that it's a possibility.
That said, I still buy most of my compact fluorescents in a yellowish colour, as the only other option I've found around here is "cool white" which to me is too sterile feeling.
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I would say the majority of my friends (including my roommate) think that the lighting in my apartment is sterile and ugly.
But they just don't know what's good for them :)
On a completely different note, thought you might be interested in this link if you haven't already seen it before.
This completely ignores the fact that a lot of American homes spend more time trying to cool down the house than heat it up.
And what about Canada in July? Wouldn't it be ridiculous to use bulbs to "heat your house" and then turn the AC on?
Do these people not even bloody think?
Whoops. I stopped reading at the digg and slashdot mentions, and didn't read the line
"Were it not winter, I don't think we'd be hearing this argument; who wants to talk about heat generation when everybody is sweating?"
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