Heatball

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To distinguish it from incandescent lamps, every heatball has this imprint
Sankey diagram of the heat ball: It produces 95% heat and 5% light from the energy supplied

Heatball ('heating ball') is an alternative name for light bulbs as part of a satirical project by the Essen mechanical engineer Siegfried Rotthäuser. With this action, Rotthäuser stimulated a public discussion about EC regulation No. 244/2009, which provided for point light sources with an energy efficiency class worse than C to be gradually banned by September 2012. For this purpose, the engineer and his brother-in-law declared conventional incandescent lamps as small heating elements . The campaign received international media attention.

In 2011 the campaign was awarded the German IQ Prize , which is awarded by the Mensa Association in Germany .

history

In April 2010, Siegfried Rotthäuser and his brother-in-law Rudolf Hannot began selling light bulbs, known as heatballs and known as small heating elements, via the Internet at a price of 1.69  euros each. 30 euro cents per copy sold were donated to a project to protect the rainforest , which, according to Rothauser, would do more to protect the climate than a ban on lightbulbs. After the initial print run of 4,000 copies was sold out within a few days and orders for a further 40,000 heatballs had been placed, the project operators decided to reorder the light bulbs once. The release of this delivery from China was suspended on November 16, 2010 by the customs office at Cologne / Bonn Airport .

The district government of Cologne had the VDE draw up an expert opinion , which came to the conclusion that heatballs, when used as light bulbs, do not meet the efficiency requirements of EC regulation 244/2009. In January 2011, the Cologne district government issued an administrative order that prohibited the heatballs from being placed on the market. On the other hand, Rudolf Hannot brought an action before the Administrative Court in Aachen , which nevertheless prohibited the sale in July 2011 by means of an urgent decision. In the main proceedings, however, it must be clarified whether heatballs are special lamps within the meaning of the EC regulation.

The tug-of-war over the classification of the heatballs as a heating element or light source or as a special lamp to be exempted from the ban on incandescent light bulbs dragged on in the following period, including the final judgment of the Administrative Court of Aachen from June 2012 against the heatball sale until spring 2014, when the action finally took place on March 31, 2014 ended with the successful sale of 10,000 Heatballs 2.0 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Regulation (EC) No. 244/2009 of the Commission of March 18, 2009 for the implementation of Directive 2005/32 / EC of the European Parliament and of the Council with regard to the specification of requirements for the environmentally friendly design of household lamps with unbundled light
  2. ↑ a b Kathrin Dorscheid: Hot import hits. Frankfurter Rundschau Online from October 28, 2010
  3. ↑ Günter Pilch: Engineer tricked EU ban. Kleine Zeitung (Austria) from November 8, 2010
  4. ^ Carl Alfred Dahl: Dette er en varmeball! ( Memento from October 31, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Aftenbladet (Norway) from October 27, 2010
  5. ↑ Vale Decir: Hágase el calor. Page 12 (Argentina) of October 24, 2010
  6. ↑ Agencija Tanjug: Biznismen prodaje sijalice kao grejalice. Glas Javnosti (Serbia)
  7. ↑ Mensa in Deutschland eV: The German IQ Prize 2011. Accessed on October 8, 2011 .
  8. ^ Philip Plickert: Small heater "Heatball". Zoll holds up 40,000 lightbulbs. FAZ.NET from November 18, 2010
  9. ↑ Die Welt : "Heatballs" are now also officially lightbulbs , Cologne, December 13, 2010
  10. ↑ heatball.de: Ordinance with an order for immediate execution and threat of a fine ( memento of October 5, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 475 kB), Cologne, Cologne District Government, January 6, 2011
  11. ↑ heatball.de: lawsuit ( memento of October 5, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 2.6 MB), Düsseldorf, Rechtsanwälte Schumacher & Partner, February 1, 2011
  12. ↑ Financial Times Deutschland on July 26, 2011: Court forbids light bulb satire. Archived from the original on August 13, 2011 ; Retrieved July 27, 2011 .