Hybrid Parking?! F- THAT.

[Bownesian]

Originally Posted by You Need a Thneed

Let's do a quick calculation. Let's figure that there's a light bulb that's on for an average of 8 hours a day, every day. That's 240 hours per month, assuming 30 days in a month on average.

An incandescent bulb uses 60 watts, the replacement CFL uses 13 watts. Therefore, a CFL bulb saves 47 watt/hours every hour.

47x 240 = 11,280 watt hours per month = 11.28 kWh per month.

Now lets assume an average power price of 10 cents per kWh, which means that for every incandescent bulb that you replace with a CFL, you save $1.28 PER MONTH. Obviously, not every bulb is on for 8 hours a day, but replacing every bulb in your house will significantly cut down your power bill.

That's more than a few pennies a month in savings.

Like I said though, everyone should go for LED bulbs, but hopefully they come down in price a lot in the next couple of years.

I can do a back of the napkin calculation for the defrayed heating costs too:

11.28 kWh/month that wouldn't shed be heat = 11.28 kWh/month that needs to be heated by a furnace

There are nine months a year in Calgary where the average temperature is below 18 degrees Celsius. This means that the furnace needs to replace missing heat equivalent to an average of at least:
11.28*9/12=8.46kWh/month

1GJ=277.8kWh
so
8.46kWh = 0.0354 GJ

A typical furnace is about 80% efficient so that works out to an average of:
0.0354/.8 = 0.04425 GJ

Natural Gas costs about $6/GJ (currently - it's been as high as $14) so the incandescent bulb saves:
0.04425*6 = .2655 = $.27 per month.

If you were somewhere that used home heating oil (~$28/GJ right now in Newfoundland with equivalent electricity prices) the bulb would "save":
0.04425*28 = $1.23/month, meaning the $1.28/month savings for the bulb is a wash. When the price of Oil was half again what it is right now, those CF bulbs would certainly have been more expensive and it would have made economic sense to have had incandescent bulbs and to have left the lights on in the winter.

I know that it's a fairly silly point to make but given a high enough fuel cost and a low enough electricity cost, there is a crossover point where CF bulbs cost more to run than incandescents, despite the propaganda to the contrary.

[Bill Bumface]

Incandescent bulbes are crappy heaters.

It's great that they can heat up a cold roof, or a cold lamp that they are sitting in, but they don't distribute heat throughout your house well at all. Your furnace is still going to have to come on, because most of that heat will never reach the thermostat.

You can just do a net energy equation on that one for cold places and say CFL bulbs suck.

[You Need a Thneed]

Originally Posted by hulkrogan

Incandescent bulbes are crappy heaters.

It's great that they can heat up a cold roof, or a cold lamp that they are sitting in, but they don't distribute heat throughout your house well at all. Your furnace is still going to have to come on, because most of that heat will never reach the thermostat.

You can just do a net energy equation on that one for cold places and say CFL bulbs suck.

Exactly. Most ight bulbs are around the ceiling. Do you spend most of your time on the ceiling? No? That's why we don't count that heat. No matter how much heat ithe bulbs are providing, it's still all waste heat, because they only heat where we can't use the heat anyway. Also, it's "uncontrolled" heat as well.

There's a reason why heat registers are installed in the floor whenever possible.

[Bownesian]

This is really getting silly but you are both incorrect about how efficient (% energy used for heat/total energy spent) a bulb is at heating a room.

The vast majority of the energy loss in incandescent light bulbs is radiation emitted in the infrared spectrum. Infrared spectrum radiations warms whatever opaque substance it hits, in this case the room where the light falls. The absorption coefficient of glass is less than 5% so 95% of the "waste energy" that isn't the tiny amount of heat conducted into the socket (the socket cannot get too hot or bad stuff would happen - that's why bulbs and sockets are vitrite and ceramic insulated). The glass is hot because the radiation flux is higher, not because it is absorbing any more than a fraction of the energy.

You also both forget the case of lightbulbs in a basement or main floor ceiling where they are between a room and a floor above. Further, (in the case of central air) the cold air return is also on the floor so heat circulates from the register, through the room and returns to the floor. That requires heating of the ceiling air and the ceiling so the heated air around the bulb does indeed count. Sure there are losses because the temperature around the socket may be a few degrees warmer but that warming is again just a small fraction of the heat that is produced when IR rays strike the floor, furniture, walls etc.

[sclitheroe]

From an overall systems perspective, the house is a closed box with a certain amount of heat energy being drained from it by contact with cooler outside air and ground, and a certain amount of energy being pumped into it from everything that consumes gas or electricity inside it, to achieve a certain average interior air temperature.

Incandescent lightbulbs are 90% efficient at putting heat into this closed box - only 2% of their output is wasted as visible light, and the balance is in other areas of the spectrum. It's not my fault that you don't have a more efficient means of moving that heat energy around - that's an application issue, not a performance issue with lightbulbs. I could put many kilowatts of incandescent bulbs in my basement, and it would be very hot down there, and cold upstairs, but I'd hit my goal of an overall average temperature (it wouldn't be evenly distributed, but it would hit the average).

I could even build a ducting system and hook up a blower motor, and create a furnace powered by lightbulbs. This furnace would be quite efficient, but very expensive to operate because electricity costs more than gas. But it would be pretty efficient. To say otherwise is silly, because we know that 90% of the energy coming out of a lightbulb is heat.

[Bownesian]

Anyway:
Do I have CF bulbs in my house?
- Yes because electricity is more expensive than natural gas and the bulbs last longer.

Will I be replacing my dim, slow to warm up CF chandelier and pot light bulbs with incandescent bulbs?
- Not until the CF bulbs start and only if they haven't gotten a whole lot better in the mean time.

Will I shed a tear for the environment when I do so?
- Not for a second. I heat my house for the majority of the months when it's dark enough to need the lights on more than a couple hours a day.

A similar argument can be successfully made for on-demand hot water heaters versus tank heaters. I thought pretty hard about whether to replace my tank heater with an on-demand heater (which is more efficient in a heat loss sense) but since that heat loss is into the house in my cold-in-the-summer basement, I'm not going to do it. Maybe once the heater starts to die, I'll think about it but the on-demand systems will have to be better in terms of working with low flow rates than they are now.

[MJM]

My favorite part about hybrids is that the engine in them has about a ten year shelf life. When you factor the waste from that (given the cost of the engine, most of the cars will just be junked), they cause more harm to the environment than regular cars.

[MJM]

I don`t think if I was a hybrid owner I would be parking in those spots. The first thought in my head when I read this title of this thread was if I ever saw one parked in those spots, I would key it. Now I actually wouldn`t ever go out and actually do this, but if I thought about it there`s likely 1000`s of more other people that did too that would likely act on their original though.

[Devils'Advocate]

Originally Posted by MJM

The first thought in my head when I read this title of this thread was if I ever saw one parked in those spots, I would key it.

The very fact that you thought about it says a lot about you.

Now, can I get a link showing the 10 year engine life?

[twotoner]

What cracks me up about this the most is that these places with hybrid parking still don't have bike racks where I can lock my bike too.

[MJM]

Originally Posted by Devils'Advocate

The very fact that you thought about it says a lot about you.

Now, can I get a link showing the 10 year engine life?

I meant the Hybrid Engine Battery, not the engine itself. I don't have time because i'm leaving for the game right now, but the article was in consumer report I believe. Indicated that the expectancy of a hybrid engine battery was between 100,000 and 150,000KMs, and a replacement battery would cost anywhere's between 5 and 10K.

Now they may have improved the technology some since a couple years ago, but that's still alot of engine battery's being replace creating a large amount of waste.

[Devils'Advocate]

Originally Posted by MJM

I meant the Hybrid Engine Battery, not the engine itself. I don't have time because i'm leaving for the game right now, but the article was in consumer report I believe. Indicated that the expectancy of a hybrid engine battery was between 100,000 and 150,000KMs, and a replacement battery would cost anywhere's between 5 and 10K.

Now they may have improved the technology some since a couple years ago, but that's still alot of engine battery's being replace creating a large amount of waste.

Between $5K and 10K?!?!? Holy crap. I have an iPhone available for sale at $4,000. Want to buy it?

Really, dealer price is $3,000. But they are being pressured by the grey market providers - autobody shops will salvage batteries from written-off hybrids and sell them for between $500 and $1700 depending upon how long they were in use. As for the "creating a large amount of waste", the batteries are 100% recyclable. Toyota has worked hard to ensure that everything in the battery can be recycled and will pay $200 for a dead battery.

[Devils'Advocate]

Originally Posted by twotoner

What cracks me up about this the most is that these places with hybrid parking still don't have bike racks where I can lock my bike too.

Well, most Ikea's that I've been to have bike racks. Home Depot doesn't get too many people showing up on bikes and I doubt that would change with a bike rack.

[dj_patm]

I parked at the one in chinook. Wrote "Hybrid" in the dirt of my car and hoped for the best lol

[slcrocket]

Originally Posted by MJM

The first thought in my head when I read this title of this thread was if I ever saw one parked in those spots, I would key it.

This is insane. You really should know that.

[MJM]

Originally Posted by slcrocket

This is insane. You really should know that.

How is it insane? I'm sure many people in this thread have that first initial reaction when someone does something stupid in a parking lot that they would just love to key that moron's car. Now none of us actually would go out in do it because we have morals, but there's always that small percentage of the population that would actually would, and given we're in a place that essentially exists becaus of oil, I think you'd be taking a risk that this may happen in parking your hybrid in a spot like the original post suggested.

[Devils'Advocate]

Originally Posted by MJM

when someone does something stupid in a parking lot that they would just love to key that moron's car.

Parking an environmentally friendly car in a parking spot designated for such cars is "stupid" and the person is a "moron"? Can you explain this?

If you would "love to key the car", again, that doesn't speak well to your "morals".

[MJM]

Originally Posted by Devils'Advocate

Parking an environmentally friendly car in a parking spot designated for such cars is "stupid" and the person is a "moron"? Can you explain this?

If you would "love to key the car", again, that doesn't speak well to your "morals".

Having a spot for an environmentally friendly car is moronic, in fact if they even tried to give a ticket to a regular car for parking in the spot, there's not a chance in hell it would stand up in court. People who park their car, although within the rules, are almost equally as moronic because 99% of the population of Calgary are going to have a problem with these spots, and there's bound to be a few unemployed riggers in this city at the moment, that would like nothing more than to take their frustration out.

[Rathji]

Originally Posted by MJM

Having a spot for an environmentally friendly car is moronic, in fact if they even tried to give a ticket to a regular car for parking in the spot, there's not a chance in hell it would stand up in court. People who park their car, although within the rules, are almost equally as moronic because 99% of the population of Calgary are going to have a problem with these spots, and there's bound to be a few unemployed riggers in this city at the moment, that would like nothing more than to take their frustration out.

Has anyone claimed these spots are a legal requirement, rather than a suggestion of the store? Maybe I missed that post.

99% of Calgarians are going to be upset that a store is encouraging a 'green' attitude' even if only at a superficial level? I don't think so.

I think the spots are a marketing gimmick used by the stores that have them that are intended to encourage shoppers who have this type of attitude (even those who don't drive hybrids) that they are concerned about the planet/energy use/pollution. I don't think a marketing gimmick is enough to make anyone mad enough to vandalize someones car, never mind the 99% you are claiming.

By using your logic, houses protected by Alarm Force would be burnt to the ground when the sign showed up on the lawn, due solely on their FAN 960 advertising.

[MJM]

Originally Posted by Rathji

Has anyone claimed these spots are a legal requirement, rather than a suggestion of the store? Maybe I missed that post.

99% of Calgarians are going to be upset that a store is encouraging a 'green' attitude' even if only at a superficial level? I don't think so.

I think the spots are a marketing gimmick used by the stores that have them that are intended to encourage shoppers who have this type of attitude (even those who don't drive hybrids) that they are concerned about the planet/energy use/pollution. I don't think a marketing gimmick is enough to make anyone mad enough to vandalize someones car, never mind the 99% you are claiming.

By using your logic, houses protected by Alarm Force would be burnt to the ground when the sign showed up on the lawn, due solely on their FAN 960 advertising.

Yes, most Calgarians would be upset that stores are providing these spots. This goes beyond promoting a green attitude, this actually infringes upon an individuals rights.