Light bulb test bank - can it extend to energy monitoring de

Mon 22 Jan 2007, 12:41

The power meter is in the light bulb library which can be borrowed for 3 days at a time.
Please contact Louise Spicer to borrow the lightbulb library by phoning 01608-810745.
The library has been organized and funded by the Charlbury Area Waste Action Group in conjunction with Sustainable Charlbury (SusCha).

Mon 22 Jan 2007, 09:50

the meter sounds useful but the sort of thing you'd only need to use once or twice to check your current set-up - is it available to rent ot or only to buy does any one know?

Sun 21 Jan 2007, 19:42

I suspect real answer is this. The manufactures that make incandescent bulbs are not going to subvert their own revenue streams. So if a Low-energy light bulb lasts 12 times longer, your customers will not comeback as frequently as they do with an incandescent bulb. So why not make is x times as expensive than a tungsten bulb. The customer saves on electricity costs, less CO2 is emitted and the manufacturers is happy and can survive to make bulbs for another day. Most manufacturers want to stay in business and even make a profit.

The Low-energy bulbs have many more components and are more difficult to manufacture than an incandescent light bulb hence the manufacturing cost is higher.
Supply and demand is also an aspect for the cost too. Most common low-energy light bulbs are relatively low in price (99p in Waitrose sometimes), it's the new experimental ones in short supply that are expensive like the GU10 type.

The supply chain rules also put up the price. The higher the price the more number of middle men you have selling the bulbs on.

Just for the full picture it is always a balance between pollution and energy and cost.
Low-energy light bulbs use two different technologies Compact Florescent tubes (CLF) and Light Emitting Diodes (LED). There are environmental issues with the mercury in CLFs. LEDs bulbs are manufactured by semiconductor plants that have been implicated in ground water contamination with extremely nasty chemicals (used in ANY electronics manufacture) such as arsenic, boron, phosphorous and gallium. Contrary to belief the electronic industry is one of the dirtiest ones.

On a brighter note.
In most homes, lighting accounts for 10-15% of the electricity bill. Low energy light bulbs can last up to 12 times longer than conventional light bulbs and can save up to £10.00 a year on electricity bills. Although low energy light bulbs cost more than conventional light bulbs they can save up to 10 times the cost of the lamp over its lifetime.

We live in an imperfect world where doing the right thing does not necessary give financial rewards or a fanfare of well deserved trumpets.

I hope this answers your questions.
Colin

Sun 21 Jan 2007, 17:52

Can someone please explain WHY all these eco friendly items are so expensive?. I would like to go green on a lot more things but cost prohibits.

Sat 20 Jan 2007, 07:31

WE are supplying some equipment to cut down power use on computers and fridges by at least 30% or more. We are also supplying Solar chargers for LapTop. We have some power monitoring equipment also in Sheep Street, which measures appliance draw of power. All good gadgets at affordable prices. Come in and see us. 37A Sheep Street

Mon 15 Jan 2007, 21:23

Malcolm,
I'm not sure about the reuse of old PCs as firewall or router because I suspect that much smaller low power devices are now available a specially to the home and small business user. This assumption relies on some sort of equation (which still eludes me) between the energy put into the original build of the old and new device the and the ongoing energy consumption over a projected functional lifetime of the device, then there is the trade off between pollution and energy which is much more unclear. A lot of the electronic waste does go straight into India's water course, but not all. It is a dilemma sometimes to reuse or scrap/recycle computers. The energy from my dedicated embedded router/firewall takes a max of 10 watts so should run at about 5watts, If I replaced it with a pentium 90 (with a hard disc!) how much power do you thing it would take? Don't get me wrong I love Linux but you have to think about the IT skills side the home users and small business and generally it is non-existent. Because our economic system is upside down ( peoples time cost more than materials) four hours or four days setting up a free Linux box is more expensive than buying a new thing :-(

I think it could be possible to bottle (pressurised) methane at the sewage works but I thinks that's as close as we can get to CHP system.
Bio-fuel is plainly evil and morally wrong not to mention more carbon causing than oil. The biggest mistake the EU has ever made, encouraging counties to import bio-fuel grown from rainforest that has been slashed and burned for that sole purpose. Like lets feed cars and not people madness. I've got nothing against you using old cooking oil though to run your car.
Home wind power is another waste of money and energy, however big off-shore wind power with gravity hydro storage for peek demand is the way to go. Passive solar is well worth while and proven. Solar PV I have not made my mind up about yet. They take 25 years to get a pay back and guess what' only last 25 years, you don't see these facts on the same page much. Well there is my rant. If you want justifications just read "Heat" by George Monbiot ISBN 0-713-99923-3 he has been very thorough. You can borrow it if you like.

Fri 12 Jan 2007, 20:14

A mini ITX board (I'd forgotten what the VIA chipsets/boards were called) with that sort of ram and disk and consuming only 21 watts - impressive.

But what is its embedded energy cost compared to my idea of utilising older generation laptops with duff screens or keyboards (the usual items…

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Fri 12 Jan 2007, 17:56

Malcolm thank you for the positive feed back. There is already a energy meter in the pack see the bottom of the pdf.

http://www.cwag.org.uk/uploads/File/List%20of%20Low%20Energy%20Lightbulbs.pdf

This server http://www.cwag.org.uk/ is running on a Kubuntu Dapper, mini ITX eden 500Mhz with 512mb of ram, using 21watts of electricity from a Southern Electric green tariff.

Wattage and Current Meter
Particularly useful to see how much electricity is being consumed while an appliance (e.g. a TV) is in
standby mode or by a transformer when the appliance (e.g. a radio) is switched off. The current drawn by a
mobile phone charger is likely to be too low to register but according to O2 only 5% of the energy used by a
charger is actually used to charge phones – the rest is used (i.e. wasted) when the charger is left plugged in.
Plug meter into a socket and plug an appliance into it. Press the Function button to change mode:
Mode 1=Voltage in Volts 240V
Mode 2=Current in Amps Minimum registered is 0.02 A (i.e. 20mA)
Mode 3=Power in Watts Voltage x Current (USEFUL MEASUREMENT)
Mode 4=Operating duration
Mode 5=kWh
Mode 6=Cost
Mode 7=Change electricity price (set to 10p/kWh)
Reset cumulative values by press SET button for 5 seconds

Thu 11 Jan 2007, 18:22

The light bulb bank is excellent and I will be hotfooting over there soonest.

I'm also wondering if the bank includes any electricity use meterage devices or could be extended to provide such?

I'd like to do an audit of our lekky hit, particularly as we have quite a few…

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