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If those solar cells are efficient, then they'll look you've painted the walls black. Not only will the quality of the light become worse (harsher shadows from
by morcheeba 9y ago
If those solar cells are efficient, then they'll look you've painted the walls black. Not only will the quality of the light become worse (harsher shadows from less diffuse light), you'll probably install more light bulbs to compensate.
- tempestn 9y agoExactly. Now that we're putting out primarily visible light from our bulbs, there isn't a bunch of free energy floating around there. Far better to save the energy by making the bulb as efficient as possible in the first place than to try to capture it back.
- 21 9y agoTechnically speaking the solar panel walls would get most of their output from the daylight, assuming you have windows, considering that it's thousand times more intense than light bulbs. But yeah, I wouldn't want to live in black glass coated rooms.
- tempestn 9y agoHa, yeah, but that's kind of like putting your jacket on under your clothes.
- lb1lf 9y agoThe EU incidentally created a similar problem when banning most incandescent bulbs. Well, at least in some countries. Here in Norway, most buildings are heated by electricity - so replacing incandescents with LED or fluorescent bulbs effectively means that you spend less on lighting, more on heating and the sum stays the same - except the new bulbs are costlier and (mostly) provide less comfy light. Sigh. Free lunches remain elusive.
- 21 9y agoUsing electricity for heating is a terrible idea. Unless you are a rich country like Norway which can afford it. You would be much better using LED for lighting and gas burning for heating. So the sum does not remain the same if you do things properly.
- badosu 9y agoConsidering practically all of electricity production in Norway is renewable (99% hydro) the less efficiency in electrical heating can be traded off the more efficient but CO2 emitting gas burning. It's true though that in countries where there's a significant fossil dependent electrical sector it's better to burn the fuel directly.
- aylons 9y agoExcept it is not as cold everyday, and not every room has the light and heating demands perfectly proportional. And incandescent bulbs also generates more trash. Tying lighting to heating is inherently inefficient.
- ajuc 9y agoWasting electricity like that... At least put it through some computer before throwing it away as heat.
- monochromatic 9y agoHeat pumps are way more efficient than just resistive heating.
- mhb 9y agoHow is that possible?
- taejo 9y agoThey steal heat from outside. It takes less energy to move heat from a cold place to a warm place, than to create warmth "from scratch".
- msl 9y agoA heat pump extracts thermal energy from, say, air. Electricity is not converted into heat, but used to create a temperature difference (one part of the system gets colder, the other gets hotter). This is vastly more efficient than using resistive heating elements. Such a system can appear to be more than 100% (up to around 400% [1]) efficient, if you look at the electricity going in, and the heat coming out. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_pump https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_pump
- tigershark 9y agoI don't think they are more efficient in Norway harsh winters..
- monochromatic 9y agoThat's actually a reasonable point, and it may be true. There's got to some temperature delta makes a heat pump a losing proposition, but I'm not sure how big that threshold is.
- johnward 9y agoI accidentally replaced one of my heat pumps with an A/C only unit. So now I have to run the emergency heat strip all winter. I haven't seen any real increase in my power usage. The heat strip was running most of the time anyway because of low temps.
- nsxwolf 9y agoGood point. Maybe things that are frequently dark - like baseboard trim?