What are the most important energy-efficient household appliances? How do their efficiencies compare with those of standard appliances? — LM, Klong Luang, Pathumthani, Thailand
I can think of three important energy-efficient household electric devices: (1) heat pumps, (2) electric discharge lamps (including fluorescent lamps), and (3) microwave ovens.
A heat pump is a device that transfers heat against its natural direction of flow. If you use one to heat your home, the heat pump uses electricity to transfer heat from the colder outside air to the hotter inside air, so that the inside air becomes even hotter and the outside air becomes even colder. The electricity that the heat pump uses also becomes thermal energy inside your home. Since both the electric energy and the thermal energy pumped from the air outside end up inside your home, a heat pump provides more heat than a simple space heater can provide with the same electricity. The energy efficiency of a heat pump decreases as the temperature difference between inside and outside becomes greater, but it typically provides 4 or more times as much heat to your home as a normal electric space heater would provide with the same amount of electricity. Incidentally, when the heat pump is reversed, so that it pumps heat out of your home, it is then an air conditioner.
Electric discharge lamps are between 2 and 5 times as energy efficient as normal incandescent light bulbs. The hot filament of an incandescent lamp delivers only about 10% of its electric power as visible light. In contrast, a fluorescent lamp delivers about 25% of its electric power as visible light and some gas discharge lamps (particularly low-pressure sodium vapor) deliver as much as 50% of their electric powers as visible light.
A microwave oven transfers about 50% of its electric power directly into the water molecules of the food that you are cooking. Cooking occurs quickly and because the cooking chamber doesn’t get hot, there is no power wasted in heating the oven itself or the room surrounding the oven. Depending on how large an object you are cooking, a microwave oven probably uses between 5 and 20 percent of the electricity it would take you to cook the same food in a standard oven.