It's too much!

[plonq]

One of the light bulbs in our kitchen fixture popped the other day. We decided that rather than just replacing it, we'd replace ALL the bulbs with those lower-energy flourescent ones. We bought the 23-watt bulbs that produce the same light as a 100-watt incandescent. All the light and only 1/4 the power usage. We is so smart.

When I was changing out the bulbs I glanced at one of them and noticed that we did not have 100-watt bulbs, but 60-watt bulbs in the kitchen. Oh well, that's still only 92 watts we are using as opposed to 240 watts, right? Not as much of a saving, but still a decent amount. It was only when I flipped the light switch that I remembered the other half of the equation.

When you replace four 60-watt bulbs with ones that give off the same light as 100-watt bulbs, you then have the equivalent of about three more bulbs. Our kitchen is now almost painfully bright. I suppose we'll get used to it over time, but for now I don't like it -- it shows off all the dirt.

Comments

[furahi.livejournal.com]

Be careful your lamps support 100 watt bulbs, because the heat is about the same even if the power consumption is lower, you could ruin your lamps :P

[funos.livejournal.com]

Uhm. That doesn't add up.

Heat dissipated is at most equal to the power consumed.
(Otherwise you'd be getting 'free energy' somehow, an no one has found that yet. ;)

So a 100W light-bulb radiates at most 100W in heat, but given the way it's made,
it's more like 95W of heat, 5W of (visible) light. (rough guess)

(A heating element on the other hand, would radiate it all as heat.)

So a 23W fluorescent tube can only radiate 23W of heat max.
Assuming the same quantity of light energy radiated as a 100W bulb, that leaves
18W of heat.

I bet they get warm, but nowhere near as hot as a 100W bulb.