Entrepreneur vs. Bureaucrat

I would like to give this guy some kind of award. Wait! Germany is still ostensibly a capitalist country so his reward will be that he will hopefully do quite well financially until others start to copy him or the EU bureaucrats plug the hole.

Skirting EU law: The rebranding of incandescent bulbs as "Heat Balls"

A German businessman is getting around a law banning incandescent bulbs by selling them as "Heat Balls".

Mon, Oct 25 2010 at 11:35 AM EST

38 Comments

Photo: James Bowe/Flickr

You gotta hand it to German businessman Siegfried Rotthaeuser, who came up with a brilliant run around the European Union ban on conventional incandescent light bulbs- he rebranded them as "Heat Balls" and is importing them for sale as a "small heating device".

 

Rotthaeuser's website is in German but Google does a passable job of translation. First, he's very clear that the Heat Ball isn't for lighting, stating (in German, the following is translated) "A HEAT BALL ® is not a lamp, but it fits in the same version!"

 

Further down: "The use of Heat Balls avoids the lack of heat. The intended use of heat Balls is the heating. "

 

The funny thing about this is that incandescent bulbs are fairly efficient when they are used as heaters, throwing off around 95% of the energy they draw as heat. In colder climates, using the bulbs for lighting isn't always an inefficient choice as the bulbs add to the warmth of the home.

 

The problem is that people will buy Heat Balls primarily as a way around the ban on incandescent bulbs. Rotthaeuser's Heat Balls could end up really taking off in a market starved for the familiar warmth of the incandescent bulb.

 

The solution to this problem is a better lightbulb. We need LEDs and CFL bulbs that offer good light in an inexpensive package. We're getting there but are still more than a few more cycles of R&D away.

 

In the meantime, if you live in Germany and are jonesing for an incandescent, take a look at the Heat Ball.