Heatball

Heatball is a brand name for an incandescent lamp. The brand was used as part of a scheme by Siegfried Rotthäuser, a mechanical engineer from Essen in Germany, to stimulate discussion of EU Regulation 244/2009.[1] This Regulation forbade the importation or sale of light sources with energy efficiency worse than 'Class C' after September 2012 as part of the phase-out of incandescent light bulbs.

Brand stamp

The scheme's declared purpose was to sell incandescent lamps as small heating elements for winter, or for use in chicken coops.[2] The scheme was covered by several members of the international press.[3][4][5][6][7][8]

History

In April 2010, two brothers Rudolf and Siegfried Rotthäuser Hannot started selling incandescent lamps over the Internet. They referred to them as Heatballs and sold each as small heating device with a price of €1.69. Thirty cents per unit sold would be donated to a project to protect the rain forest, which, according to Rotthäuser, would benefit the climate more than the ban.[2] Within a few days, the initial stock of 4,000 units was sold out and orders of 40,000 units outstanding. The second batch was ordered but the shipment was held back on 16 November 2010 by the customs officials at Cologne Airport.[9]

Awards

See also
  • Easy-Bake Oven, a toy that originally used incandescent lamps as the heat source.

References
  1. Commission Regulation (EC) No 244/2009 of 18 March 2009 implementing Directive 2005/32/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council with regard to ecodesign requirements for non-directional household lamps.
  2. Kathrin Dorscheid: Heißer Importschlager. Frankfurter Rundschau Online, 28 October 2010
  3. Günter Pilch: Ingenieur trickst EU-Verbot aus. Archived 2010-11-13 at the Wayback Machine Kleine Zeitung (Ostrich), 8 November 2010
  4. Carl Alfred Dahl: Dette er en varmeball! Archived 2010-10-31 at the Wayback Machine Aftenbladet (Norway) vom 27 October 2010
  5. Vale Decir: Hágase el calor. Pagina 12 (Argentine) 24 October 2010
  6. Agencija Tanjug: Biznismen prodaje sijalice kao grejalice. Glas Javnosti (Serbia)
  7. German Firm Bemoans European Ban on Incandescent Bulbs, to Sell Heatballs Bloomberg, 19 October 2010
  8. German "heatball" wheeze outwits EU light bulb ban Reuters 15 October 2010
  9. Philip Plickert: Kleinheizgerät „Heatball“. Zoll hält 40.000 Glühbirnen auf. FAZ.NET vom 18. November 2010
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