On Mar 13, 12:29 pm, "rb608" wrote:

but an electric light bulb left on in an electrically-
heated house is a wash as far as I can see in terms of energy
conservation. Am I missing something?

Not anything significant that I can see. In heating, entropy
plays in our favor.

Being at the bottom rung of energy efficiency already (the
electrically heated house), there ain't much room in that
scenario to do worse. Heat from any other source
_would_ be much more efficient than the light bulb (I
suppose someone out there will want to quibble on the
word "any").

Jon.