In article ,
Mike Hartigan wrote:
In article ,
says...
Mike Hartigan wrote:
Actually, the illumination is, indeed, free. 500 watts of energy
consumed results in 500 watts of heat, regardless of what else the
energy is doing. If you have a refrigerator that consumes 500 watts
of electricity and it runs continuously, it's producing exactly the
same amount of heat as five 100 watt light bulbs. And it chills your
beer for free. In fact, if you heat your home with electricity, it
doesn't cost a dime to run all your appliances and keep all your
lights on all day and all night long (assuming, of course, that you
do it during the heating season and you're not overheating your
house).
snip
I'm surprised the marketeers have never tried that argument as an
advantage of electric heat over gas or other alternatives. :-)
The problem is that electricity costs so much more per unit of energy
than the alternatives that it can't be sold as an economic
alternative. Electric heat is 100% efficient. It simply costs more.
When I was a kid, in the Pacific Northwest, electricity was $.02/KwH.
My Father, the Banker, was a Depression KId, and had a fetish about
turning off the lights, in rooms that were unoccupied. He would
get very angry at us kids for "Wasting Electricity". In 7th Grade,
I wrote a Paper for Science Class on the efficency of an "All Electric
House" which we lived in. Got an "A" on the Paper, and after my Father
read it, he quit ragging on us kids about the lights, but only durning
the winters. Summers were still a bit of a hassel........
Bruce in alaska
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add a 2 before @