How much coal is required to run a 100-watt light bulb 24 hours a day for a year?

[4dsc]

http://science.howstuffworks.com/question481.htm

Holy crap Batman!!

714 pounds of coal, 5 pounds of sulfur dioxide, 5.1 pounds of NOx, and 1852 pounds of CO2 - for 1 light bulb

Now how many people are going to start turning off the lights they don't use??

[Warpy]

1. I only have a few fixtures that require incandescents

and I use them very sparingly. Two of those lights have been there for 11 years, so you know "sparingly" is more a synonym for "miserly" in this case.

I originally converted to CFLs because I hate climbing stepladders to change light bulbs.

I'm looking forward to the day when LCDs are perfected and I can swap the remaining incandescents over to them.

[Trillo]

2. So that's (very roughly) about 2 lbs of coal per day.

We use florescents in most fixtures, and would really love a solar cell generators on the roof, but unfortunately, cannot afford those systems, even with subsidies :(.

[OKIsItJustMe]

4. Citizenre

http://renu.citizenre.com/

[4dsc]

5. per only one light!

It may only be 2 pounds of coal per light but multiply that many times for 10's or 100's of millions of lights and what do we get??

[razzleberry]

11. but that is only 2 to 4 cents worth of coal a day

people here seem to have no concept of the
scale of the issues involved

[personman]

3. The CFLs we use, use about 1/4 of the power.

But I'm still careful to turn them off when I'm not in the room. They still have mercury in them and still use power of course.

[fed-up]

6. holy #^$&^# that is a lot of coal!!!!! I had no clue-hard kicking and reccing nt

[truedelphi]

7. Ya know A lot of harm can happen from turning off light bulbs

I work with the elderly. I can't tell you how many times I have almost been killed because while I was trying maneuvering around on their stairs to get to the Apricot PREE-serves in their basement, they turned the light off on me to save 6 cents an hour.

The thing is the same person that runs around the house turning off lights is the same person that leaves the computer and the printer and the montior running while they do their hour and ahalf jogging routine. And while the lights get turned off around the house the TV gets left on.

I'm all for conserving. I just wish that a different appliance was used as an example to get us to turn off something - rather than the damn lights!

[Gregorian]

8. Now extend that information to other things you do.

And just confine it to things with elements. An oven. A stove. A hot water heater. 2000 Watts, some of these things are.

The more one knows about math and conversion of energy, the scarier this all gets.

The car is taken for granted in this country. And around the world, for that matter. Forget a 100 Watts. How about 100 KiloWatts? That's a small car by today's standards. Run that beast for an hour every day, and then start thinking about the light bulb example. Now multiply that by a billion, and you are starting to see what the planet earth is feeling.

I'm lucky to come from a family that was trained to turn out lights, back in the early 60's. And not for money. Because we already knew where things were headed. I can hardly believe the world is just catching on.

The problem is, as users of a modern lifestyle, we have a responsibility to be educated and aware of what we are using and what we are doing. We should have a day where everyone drives around without mufflers. That's what my dad and I used to joke about when we realized the love of the automobile was taking over our society. People would quickly learn what a violent thing the internal combustion engine really is. But we've manicured it to seem so kind and gentle. I'll tell you, I spend a lot of my life in disgust. It's wearing. But it's finally starting to look like the world is waking up. I dearly hope it isn't too late.

[firefox_fan]

9. I bought a bunch of LED lightbulbs... They consume close to nothing...

But they are not as bright as I was expecting.

[Patriot Abroad]

13. Expensive too!

I'm looking into them for replacing spotlights in my kitchen, that look great but are 50W each and seem to last about a month - the buzz from the sellers is that they are dimmer, but I might be able to mix them with the existing ones and cut the overall costs . . and they're supposed to last a long time ...

[progressoid]

10. Jeez, how much to run this computer?

[Patriot Abroad]

12. Probably around twice as much as a light bulb

Here's an interesting site:
http://michaelbluejay.com/electricity/computers.html

They recommend that home users use standby mode/power off screens when not in use, but concentrate on heating, cooling and lighting as there are much larger gains for the homeowner to achieve in these areas!

[formercia]

14. Check to see how much power your computer is using.

Some of the big towers wirh a crt display can use well over a Kilowatt.

I'm going to all laptop soon.

[Tesha]

15. A kilowatt? Doubtful.

> Some of the big towers wirh a crt display can use well over a Kilowatt.

There's no doubt that computers use (waste?) a lot of energy
but I'm having a hard time imagining a home computer that
uses a kilowatt of energy. Most of them come with an 18-gauge
line cord and that's only rated for about 6-700 Watts.

(Important hint: Because of the "power factor" of the computer's
power supply, you can't just take the nameplate amps and multiply
that by 120 volts to get the watts consumed.)

Citation for your claim?

Tesha

[firefox_fan]

16. That's a lot of CO2!

Damn.