Those are called space heaters :)

In fact a company in Germany tried to circumvent the EU ban on lightbulbs by calling then heatballs. Makes sense because as a heater they're very efficient.

There also are (or were) a lot of consumer products which used ordinary incandescents for heat. The familiar example to Americans of a certain age is the EZ-Bake Oven, but there was a long tail of others, because if you wanted an off-the-shelf source for ~40-150W of heat, and the light is either a plus or neutral, it was tough to beat an Edison bulb and socket.

Another example of this:

Bird sanctuaries are harmed by the ban in some ways (though in the meantime they've no doubt found alternatives) because incandescent bulbs make great heaters.[1]

[1]: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/incandescent-bulb-ban-...

> Makes sense because as a heater they're very efficient.

Resistive heat (like a light bulb or space heater) is terribly inefficient. Resistive heat up high (in a ceiling or on a light) is even worse than resistive heat at ground level, because the heat escapes the dwelling without heating the occupants in the room much.

> Resistive heat (like a light bulb or space heater) is terribly inefficient.

My personal concept of resistive heat is effective comes from a YouTube channel called Technology Connections. The argument is that almost all of the energy taken in by an electric resistive heater is given out as heat so it is pretty close to 100% efficiency. I understand that a heat pump is practically a better alternative for almost all use cases though.

Similarly, speaking of electric light bulbs, my understanding is there is no reason why an LED light bulb shouldn't last over ten years of continuous use. At least that is my impression from this reddit comment (please correct me if I am wrong)

https://old.reddit.com/r/HomeImprovement/comments/leunb1/why...

> There are many poorly manufactured LED lights out there. The LED itself is typically fine, but the driver electronics in the base tend to fail on poor quality products.

> I was having lots of failures for a while, but much less lately as I've tried to look for more brand name products.

I think heatpumps are something like 400% efficient for domestic heating, depending on outfoor temperature and so forth, so I guess resistive heating is inefficient by comparison, though I agree it seems weird to call close to 100% efficient "terribly inefficient". Probably losing heat from your lightbulbs to whatever is on the other side of your cieling is a significant factor too.

> I agree it seems weird to call close to 100% efficient "terribly inefficient"

A lot of my winter and nighttime electricity comes from natural gas.

50-60% of the heat energy in natural gas can get turned into electricity and make it to my house.

Then, it can be used to heat my ceiling a light bulb, where almost half of the heat immediately escapes my home. This is not a very good way to heat my house, versus my high-efficiency natural gas central air system that is more than 95% efficient in using the energy in natural gas to heat my home: it's about 3x worse.

Of course, even more efficient would be to use the natural gas to make electric power that runs a heat pump. That could be 200% efficient end-to-end.

>Of course, even more efficient would be to use the natural gas to make electric power that runs a heat pump. That could be 200% efficient end-to-end.

Or, as the gas is already being pumped to your home, use the natural gas directly to power the expansion engine of the heat pump. Noisy, though.

Or use the gas for cooling in the same manner that a propane-powered refrigerator does. Although I have no idea how efficient that would be.

The second problem with LEDs is heat. LEDs produce a lot less heat than incandescents, but they also deal much worse with getting hot. Thus you need large (for surface area) and/or expensive (due to more expensive materials with high conductivity) heat sinks. Cheaper bulbs will tend to cheap out on this aspect, but there are also fundamental constraints especially in bulbs designed to fit traditional fittings.

And yet I've had two (name brand) LED bulbs die in the past year with <3 years of operational life. The drivers in most of these bulbs are garbage.

It's a shame that they can advertise the life of the diode itself with no regard for the rest of the electronics.

> Resistive heat (like a light bulb or space heater) is terribly inefficient.

Resistive heat has efficiency ~1. That is better that almost any other heating source with exception of heat pumps and cogeneration. If we consider visible light as a separate gain, then light bulb has efficiency ~1.02

> Resistive heat up high (in a ceiling or on a light) is even worse than resistive heat at ground level, because the heat escapes the dwelling without heating the occupants in the room much.

For light bulb, i guess most energy is dissipated by IR radiation and only small part by convection. So it heats whole room and occupants, but not air.

> That is better that almost any other heating source

... if you don't charge generation and transmission inefficiencies against it. High efficiency natural gas heating systems are 98% efficient; compare to natural gas combined cycle plants that are ~60% efficient, plus a few percent more lost to transmission and distribution.

> with exception of heat pumps

Sure, that's the actually-efficient source of heat from electricity.

> For light bulb, i guess most energy is dissipated by IR radiation and only small part by convection.

For incandescent bulbs, this is unrealistic. The bulb is quite hot and heats the air around it and the fixture.

Moreover, of the IR, a whole lot also strikes the fixture and is conducted into the ceiling.

... if you don't charge generation and transmission inefficiencies against it.

Well yes. Statement 'efficiency of X' generally means 'useful work of X / relevant energy input into X on X boundary', not including efficiency of whole supply chain from primary energy source.

I have no idea what the percentages are but based on a lifetime of anecdotal experience esp with incandescent, I'd bet you're wrong. Being across the room from a light bulb will warm you a bit, but nothing like proximity to the bulb, especially when you're above it.

You're also being hit with more IR when you're closer. That being said, getting the same amount of light from an LED seems to only take 10% as much power, but they're also probably putting out much less IR, but LEDs still heat up a little, ...

A bare lightbulb is almost an anisotropic point source. You can put a reflector around it to target the IR in some direction. Its energy efficiency at the bulb is the same, i.e. nearly perfect. The energy delivered to target is different.

> Resistive heat has efficiency ~1

It does if you only consider the efficiency of the electricity -> heat conversion, but electricity generation itself is often not that efficient. It can be a lot more efficient to go fuel -> heat than fuel -> electricity -> heat.

One trick of cold rooms and frozen pipes - put a light bulb in there.

In the (old) house that I'm in, there's a room that is for all practical purposes, under the garage. It is very poorly insulated and for some reason, some water pipes ran through it. On a cold winter, the pipes can freeze.

So, there's a lightbulb in there that for several years kept the pipes from freezing. The pipes have since been rerouted.

The next step up from just a lightbulb is to put a Y connector with two lightbulbs on it and screw a dusk to dawn sensor into one of the branches and then another lightbulb into that. This way, if the primary lightbulb burns out, the other one will turn on.

It's still a thing in Poland. They are either sold as heatballs or workshop light (doesn't have strobe effect which could be potentially dangerous around saws). That was mostly when fluorescent lightbulbs were the only alternative. These days people go for LED lightbulbs instead.

Nowadays space heaters are for bitcoin/ethereum production.

I keep wondering when ASIC+5G "electric heaters" will be nearly given away to people.