Watering Light Bulbs
Water Used For Making Electricity
It takes me forever to read things of interest to me - the vertigo thing gets in the way. So, I just read this article from the August 2008 inssue of Mother Earth News titled The Intertwined Tale of Energy and Water
The authors are from Virginia Tech, and have crunched the numbers for how much water is needed in creating our electricty. They've even broken it down as to how much each energy source uses water with both high and low values. I've taken a median approach to come up with my numbers.
Making A Lightbulb
So then, I went on a search for how much energy it takes to actually produce a light bulb. Then I looked for both incandescent bulbs and CFLs. I haven't looked for LED's and doubt highly I'll find the numbers I'm looking for. It was difficult enough to find them for the first 2 light bulbs.
This gent took his numbers from a Dutch study , and I've taken many of my numbers from him - along with making a few more assumptions - LOL - scary, but in reality, it doesn't add up to much.
Where am I going with the and the title? Here it is: We don't think about the amount of water it takes to produce all of the little things in our lives. Nor do we think about the amount of water it takes to keep them running. Well, these two articles focus on the light bulb. The lowly light bulb.
Water For Energy
It takes 1600 gallons of water to produce 100 kWh of energy. Roughly. It depends on the energy source. However, for NYS, we'll go with 1600 since we have such a mix of energy sources. You can do your own figures.
A Light Bulb's Life Cycle
The Dutch study went through the entire life cycle of regular and CFL's - from production to disposal. The CFL takes far more energy - and thus water - to produce, but in the end, even if you only get half the life-expectancy the manufacturers claim it has, it takes only 1/4 of the energy.
The CFL - uses about 1974 gallons of water over its life (1000 hours).
The incandescent - uses about 960 gallons of water over it's life (125 hours)
At first blush, it looks like a no-brainer. Why are we switching to CFL's? Because you'll go through about 8 regular bulbs in that same socket that you could have the CFL. Even if you only went through 4, you're still using far more energy and WATER to create/use/dispose of that regular bulb, compared to the CFL.
It Adds Up
And why is this so important? Well, take a look at the number of light sockets you have in your house. Someone came up with an average of 30 per house. I think that's under estimated. I just did a mental list of our house - which is smallll - and came up with 42. If you have even that average of 30 (if all the bulbs blew at once, how many would it take for you to replace them all?), and if you only replaced 1/3 of them with CFL compared to standard bulbs, You'll be saving a huge chunk of water.
Granted, not every socket can take a CFL and not every light should have one. Short duration lighting is better left to incandescents - they last longer and actually use less energy when turned on for 4 minutes or less - compared to the CFL. But there are many throughout the house that can very effectively be changed to CFL's. 5 of the fixtures are already flourescent or CFL. 13 have been converted to CFL and the rest are very short duration use.
Those 18 CFLs are using 35,500 gallons of water.
In contrast, going with the 4:1 ratio since I have yet for a CFL to work as long as they say, incandescents that would be in those sockets would use 142,000 gallons of water. I'm guessing no one has ever figured this water use into how much an average household uses per day.
Further Reading On Our Water Problems
Here's an article that showing how we are putting ourselves into states of drought.
Here's one about Lake Superior shrinking. And no one really knows why. This might be part of the answer.
Mercury
And - a tidbit of an aside regarding mercury in CFL's - it doesn't match what is spewed out of power plants using coal (54% percent of our electricity is produced by coal, nationwide). The number? 48 tons of mercury per year from our coal electricity .
It takes me forever to read things of interest to me - the vertigo thing gets in the way. So, I just read this article from the August 2008 inssue of Mother Earth News titled The Intertwined Tale of Energy and Water
The authors are from Virginia Tech, and have crunched the numbers for how much water is needed in creating our electricty. They've even broken it down as to how much each energy source uses water with both high and low values. I've taken a median approach to come up with my numbers.
Making A Lightbulb
So then, I went on a search for how much energy it takes to actually produce a light bulb. Then I looked for both incandescent bulbs and CFLs. I haven't looked for LED's and doubt highly I'll find the numbers I'm looking for. It was difficult enough to find them for the first 2 light bulbs.
This gent took his numbers from a Dutch study , and I've taken many of my numbers from him - along with making a few more assumptions - LOL - scary, but in reality, it doesn't add up to much.
Where am I going with the and the title? Here it is: We don't think about the amount of water it takes to produce all of the little things in our lives. Nor do we think about the amount of water it takes to keep them running. Well, these two articles focus on the light bulb. The lowly light bulb.
Water For Energy
It takes 1600 gallons of water to produce 100 kWh of energy. Roughly. It depends on the energy source. However, for NYS, we'll go with 1600 since we have such a mix of energy sources. You can do your own figures.
A Light Bulb's Life Cycle
The Dutch study went through the entire life cycle of regular and CFL's - from production to disposal. The CFL takes far more energy - and thus water - to produce, but in the end, even if you only get half the life-expectancy the manufacturers claim it has, it takes only 1/4 of the energy.
The CFL - uses about 1974 gallons of water over its life (1000 hours).
The incandescent - uses about 960 gallons of water over it's life (125 hours)
At first blush, it looks like a no-brainer. Why are we switching to CFL's? Because you'll go through about 8 regular bulbs in that same socket that you could have the CFL. Even if you only went through 4, you're still using far more energy and WATER to create/use/dispose of that regular bulb, compared to the CFL.
It Adds Up
And why is this so important? Well, take a look at the number of light sockets you have in your house. Someone came up with an average of 30 per house. I think that's under estimated. I just did a mental list of our house - which is smallll - and came up with 42. If you have even that average of 30 (if all the bulbs blew at once, how many would it take for you to replace them all?), and if you only replaced 1/3 of them with CFL compared to standard bulbs, You'll be saving a huge chunk of water.
Granted, not every socket can take a CFL and not every light should have one. Short duration lighting is better left to incandescents - they last longer and actually use less energy when turned on for 4 minutes or less - compared to the CFL. But there are many throughout the house that can very effectively be changed to CFL's. 5 of the fixtures are already flourescent or CFL. 13 have been converted to CFL and the rest are very short duration use.
Those 18 CFLs are using 35,500 gallons of water.
In contrast, going with the 4:1 ratio since I have yet for a CFL to work as long as they say, incandescents that would be in those sockets would use 142,000 gallons of water. I'm guessing no one has ever figured this water use into how much an average household uses per day.
Further Reading On Our Water Problems
Here's an article that showing how we are putting ourselves into states of drought.
Here's one about Lake Superior shrinking. And no one really knows why. This might be part of the answer.
Mercury
And - a tidbit of an aside regarding mercury in CFL's - it doesn't match what is spewed out of power plants using coal (54% percent of our electricity is produced by coal, nationwide). The number? 48 tons of mercury per year from our coal electricity .
Labels: cfl's, coal, mercury, water, water conservation
posted by Leslie at
11:05 PM
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