I (my family) converted our home to CFL maybe 10 years ago. Then we began converting to LED a few years ago and are maybe 90% LED now. The largest fixture in our home is the kitchen lamp, 80 watts of regular flourescent.

An LED home is a dim home, however most activities aren't effected by living in that environment. Watching TV, on the computer etc.
However I require higher lighting when reading (or working on things like pins) and I prefer a good old incandescent 60 or 75w bulb for those occasions.

There's a lot of argument about national power consumption and the like. We should let the free market dictate things like this. It's almost like nobody have noticed the rows and racks of LED's and CFL's in the stores which were recently filled with incandescents.
People in general have been phasing out incandescents for more than a decade now. No need for another Federal law. Making incandescents illegal to sell is ridicuous.

Even if I won't be able to replace my reading and working lights at my local store, I'll have them shipped to me from relatives elsewhere. From another country.

I was at one time going to convert my house to a hybrid system of grid and solar. I was going to use the grid for heavy load items such as the heat pump etc, and light loads such as LED lit rooms, alarm clocks, small fans etc to solar.

The reality of solar, even with LED hit pretty hard.

My original plan was to convert just 1 room for a test. I was going to tap into the circuit at the existing breaker box. "They always say" it's cheaper to make your own solar panel so I made a pair using ebay solar cells. I put together 2 panels to total about 120 watts in bright sunlight. I constructed them quite well using 2 sheets of 1/4" safety glass each, hermetically sealed at the glass shop. I could have went the cheaper construction with plywood but those typicall only last a month or so before water penetration and corrosion.
I bought a 30a charge controller (room to expand) and two deep cycle (golf cart) batteries. The batteries connect to a 2kw inveter so I can run 120v AC devices.

The result was not as I had expected.

This was back in 2009. These are a few of the things I discovered along the way:

* Anything permanently attached to my house is against the government ordinance unless it is UL approved by government inspectors and installed by government licensed installers.
* Anything permanently attached to my home without government approval will void my home insurance. If my wife starts a grease fire in the kitchen and inspectors find modifications at the breaker box it can/will void my insurance even if it has nothing to do with the fire.

I am not willing to take the risk so those things killed the goal of my original project.

But all was not lost. My panels have been charging my batteries since then, and they run a string of LED exterior security lights in my back yard. I have a 3-bulb standing yard lamp with (3) 9w LED's and 2 18w sealed beam LED flood lamps in the very rear. The system has to be maintained once a month. Battery water levels must be checked/added and I overcharge as directed every couple of months to keep the electrolyte stirred.

These were my other discoveries:
*If I did this again I'd use high output commercial panels instead. They are expensive upfront but cheaper per watt and come with at least 20yr warranty.
*Solar panels in a storage setup cost almost 3x as much as grid electricity.
*A grid system uses electricity collected by panels to assist in your electric bill. For example if you use 3KW over a month and generate 1.5KW then your power company bill will be about half. However few people can fork out the +70K out of pocket expense (After rebates and gov incentives) so they take out a loan. Between the power savings and the cost of the loan, there isn't really any benefit. Pray there isn't any out of warranty equipment failure.
Such a setup is guaranteed for about 20 years so when you're done with your loan then it's about time to replace the system again. More, if the grid failes your expensive solar setup won't help you. The power from all your panels will be off even in bright daylight during a grid outage.

The only real or perceived benefit to my solar power generator is during power failure. I can run a lamp and a few small things (No heaters or fridges etc). I won't be dependent on a source of petro should the outage last a few days. Given the fact that grid failure is extremely rare this has been a prohibitively expensive experiment.

I brought up my solar project as it relates to power saving... as LED's do. A lot of people fall for the advertisment scams "Get off the grid with my solar power project book/CD". Disgustingly dishonest those venders are.

Something else to note. Most everyone compares the quality of light to that of incandescent. Not the other way around and there's a reason for it. No, I am not trashing LED's my house (and yard) is full of them but it's just an observation.

There are a couple choices.
Our family have 2 indoor cats and 3 outdoor cats.
We bought a thermally insulated dog house with a heating pad which provide a nice sleeping quarters for the cats outside. We also bought a larger plastic dog house to keep their food and water. Like you, We use a light bulb to heat the larger house.

There are a couple options. One is to buy a heated pad, but the output may not be enough in a less sealed and larger space.
If you are good with tools and working things out then you can modify the heating pad of an old coffee maker. I did this once by removing the heating element (about the size of a TO-3 transistor) and screwed it to a large heat sink with heat conducting grease. My heat sink was too large and it continually drew too much current (about 90w). It drew about 7w as originally in the coffee maker. I think a smaller heat sink may have worked perfectly.

However I wouldn't advise anyone who isn't good at thinking things through to experiment with heating devices else burn yourself or worse.

Funny thing is when I was young they only used paper bags. But then they were banned because of environmental issues. Now they are banning plastic bags? Really? Maybe walking our food home on foot in sheep skin sacks would be best like they did in medieval times. But then PITA would get upset. Not a good choice either.

Being facetious, of course.

Does anyone know how the industry is measuring the light output from LED's? What I mean to say, is their meter pointed directly at the element or measuring reflected light at a fixed point of reference? Do they test these real-world or just rely on printed specifications?

For example if you fix your eyes on the LED element itself for a given moment then you will cause a severe burn to your eye. Doing the same with an incandescent rated at the same light output will also burn but to a lesser degree.

It's my guess they are rating the output based on brightness from the element itself or statistical data rather than how much useful light is actually produced by the package. I mean to say, the effective radiant surface of a frosted incandescent bulb is considerably larger than the few CM's of a bright LED array.

I have rows of stylish "frosted" LED's in our bathrooms. Our master bathroom has the longest stiring of 6 in a row. I believe they are 13 watt and their package boasted the same as a 60 watt incandescent. Based on the claim, the frosted LED's should produce the same size lighting surface as an equivelent frosted incandescent hence the same useful radiated light.
But they don't. The dim illumination of these "60w" LED's provide enough illumination to shower and other "business". We keep a pair of 40w incandescents of the same style frosted glass in the drawer for my wife's makeup etc because they produce more light.
You can even stare at the glowing frosted "60W" LED globes without hardly any retina effect, yet doing the same with a regular incandescent 40w of the same style will hurt your eyes.

If my hypothesis is correct, maybe that is why a box of LED's can claim the same as a 60 watt bulb (Element brightness not useful radiance) yet you get it home and it's quite obviously not the same.