Re: Suspension losses

On 1/13/2025 12:06 PM, Wolfgang Strobl wrote:

Am Mon, 13 Jan 2025 11:03:03 -0500 schrieb Frank Krygowski
<frkrygow@sbcglobal.net>:
 

On 1/13/2025 8:57 AM, zen cycle wrote:

On 1/13/2025 2:01 AM, Jeff Liebermann wrote:

On Mon, 13 Jan 2025 13:20:04 +0700, John B. <slocombjb@gmail.com>
wrote:
>

But long before the days of transistors and "circuit boards" my folks
had an electric blanket... used it all the rest of their lives. Is the
modern one better?

>
Not really better, but certainly safer.  Electric heaters are all 100%
efficient.  Every watt you shove into the heating wires is turned into
heat.  There's no way to improve on 100% efficiency.

>
Nothing is 100% efficient

>
It's certainly true that 100% of the electricity consumed by an electric
blanket becomes heat.

 But that 100% isn't efficiency, it's just a raw conversion rate for
Electricity to heat in an isolated blanket.

ISTM a good definition of efficiency is "Desired output divided by input." Since the desired output is heat, I think it's 100% efficient.

You, as a person, don't need or consume heat. Somewhat simplified, you
need a certain range of temperatures.  In the ideal case, you don't need
any additional energy, because your body already produces heat. A little
bit of isolation, perhaps provided by that very blanket, might be
sufficient. 

And, I suppose, we could do away with all home heating, and just wear very heavy clothing all winter. But I don't know of anyone doing that.

->
<https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0301421514002638>
 "A brighter future? Quantifying the rebound effect in energy efficient
lighting"
 <https://www.arquiled.com/en/avoiding-the-rebound-effect-when-transitioning-to-led/>
 "In Portugal, the average amount of light has risen 120% in the last
five years. It is urgent to prevent the energy savings associated with
the transition to LED from being offset by unnecessary lighting"

I don't perceive that to be a serious problem, at least indoors. If the objective is to expend less energy, it's still been achieved.
I'm not a fan of overly bright headlamps nor outdoor light pollution, but those seem to be separate issues.
--
- Frank Krygowski