A European entrepreneur is selling incandescent lamps as “heat balls” to get around the European ban going into effect this year. No, I’m not making this up!
We’ll probably see all sorts of shenanigans like this in 2012 when the U.S. standards start to go into effect.
What is so terrible about simply buying energy-saving halogen screw-in lamps if you don’t like CFLs? You get virtually the same performance but with 30% energy savings. I’d call that a win-win.
The “Heat Ball” was inevitable. It is simply a case of the free market deciding what it wants versus the government mandate. The government myopicly focuses on a single aspect of efficiency and bans a product for it’s shortcomings in that narrow assesment.
In northern climates, the incandescent (and the halogen version) are incredibly efficient at delivering heat and light into a space. That warmth you feel from an incandescent is not imaginary. In heated spaces, the incandescents so called “waste heat” is not wasted at all. It’s radiated into the space as radiant warmth. Radiant heat is highly efficient as it warms the surfaces we touch and allows us to comfortably tolerate lower air tempuratures. I prefer Halogen PAR lamps over the other types simply for there ability to project infrared energy.
Couple your incandescents with a good dimmer for control and you can create a very low maintenace(3 to 4 year lamp changes), environmentally friendly (no mercury), high color rendering (1.0 remember?) heating and lighting system. While not appropriate for all applications, incandescents still have a place in the market.