Re: Ban the incandescent lamp!

Here's my take on this question, from my part of the world:

In Atlantic Canada, the heating season is effectively seven months
long -- October through April -- and the vast majority of homes here
are heated either electrically or by oil. Wood (and to a much lesser
extent, wood pellet) is another popular fuel choice in (mostly) rural
areas but, even so, it is largely used as a secondary or supplemental
heat source. Very few homes utilize either air or ground-source heat
pumps and natural gas, sadly, is available to only a few hundred homes
at this time.

Currently, oil and electric heat cost roughly the same on a BTU basis,
with electricity holding the clear advantage. One litre of heating oil
contains roughly 9.1 kWh of heat, assuming a boiler efficiency of 85
per cent (of course, the seasonal efficiency of most oil-fired boilers
falls well below this). At pre $75.00 a barrel prices, the cost of
oil heat ranges anywhere from $0.085 to $0.11 per kWh, depending upon
the overall efficiency of the home's heating system. By comparison,
here in Nova Scotia, we currently pay $0.0922 per kWh for electricity
and in neighbouring New Brunswick, the current price is $0.0837 and
$0.0663; this last number being the trailing block rate.

So, in a perverse way, anyone who heats their home with an oil furnace
or boiler operating at the lower end of the efficiency range, could
actually SAVE money using incandescent bulbs, given that the heat they
provide is less costly than that of oil. For electrically heated
homes, it's a wash.

Now, simply as a guess, less than one per cent of all homes here in
Atlantic Canada have air conditioning, as our summers are (so it
seems) all too short, daytime temperatures are generally pretty
moderate and nighttime temperatures are almost always perfect for
sleeping. With extended daylight during the spring, summer and early
fall, its safe to say the bulk of residential lighting demand
coincides fairly nicely with the heating season. Thus, there really
isn't much of a penalty to be paid in using incandescent light sources
all year round.

Trust me, I take no pleasure in sharing this as I've always believed
one should use the best tool to do the job and, in terms of
residential lighting, CFLs are clearly one of the better choices.
It's unfortunate that for we Atlantic Canadians, the numbers are not
as strong as I would like.

And, for the record, I personally use CFLs for two key reasons. One
is that more than 80 per cent of our electricity here in Nova Scotia
is generated by buring relatively "dirty" coal and high sulphur bunker
oil, so I want to minimize the environmental costs associated with my
energy use. Secondly, I recently installed a ductless heat pump as a
supplemental heat source and the heat it produces is two to
two-and-a-half times cheaper than either oil or electric resistance
so, for me, CFLs will, in fact, save me money all year round.

Cheers,
Paul

On Sun, 23 Apr 2006 09:34:29 -0400, Victor Roberts
<xxx@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Sun, 23 Apr 2006 00:18:11 GMT, "TKM" <nomail@xxxxxx>
wrote:

An incandescent lamp becomes much more energy efficient if you consider the
heat output as a positive which it is in many locations including the U.S.
where at least half of the population lives where the heating season is
twice as long as the cooling season.

I would agree that counting the waste heat from incandescent
lamps as a heat source in the winter modifies the energy
equation a bit, but even with the increase in oil and gas
prices, a BTU of energy generated by electricity cost far
more than the same BTU generated by oil or gas. And, once
the cooling season kicks in, the cost of removing the waste
heat with air conditioning will probably cancel any
remaining benefit from the heating season.

Someone must have done an analysis of this by region in the
US.

.

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