Compact Fluorescent Lights – Save $100 per year in 5 minutes
I love summertime in North Carolina. Here in the Raleigh/Durham area, the sun sets as late as 8:35pm during the middle of the summer – which is great for kids’ sports and other outdoor activities. But when the sun isn’t shining, it takes energy to light your home – and that energy cost can really add up!
You are probably familiar with the “Watt” rating on conventional bulbs. I remember as a kid having a shelf where we kept the 60, 75, and 100 watt bulbs. It seems like we changed an awful lot of them.
Nowadays, there is a much better option. Compact Fluorescent Light bulbs (also called CFLs) take ¼ the amount of energy to produce the same amount of light as conventional bulbs. Furthermore, they last about 5 years – that’s nearly 10 times longer than a regular bulb!
So what does this mean to your wallet? Well, it is just a matter of measuring the watts and doing the math. Let’s say that you replace 12 bulbs in your house with CFLs. For simplicity, let’s assume that they were all 75 Watt bulbs and that each of them burn for an average of 4 hours per day.
According to my Progress Energy bill (Raleigh / Durham area of North Carolina), our electricity costs about 10 cents per Kilowatt Hour – or put another way, it would cost 10 cents to burn a 1000 watt bulb for 1 hour.
So if we burn 12 conventional bulbs for 4 hours that take 75 watts each, we are spending:
12 bulbs * 4 hours * 75 watts = 3600 watt hours (also known as 3.6 Kilowatt hours) which would cost 36 cents. Over 365 days, that would come to $131.40.
If we replace those bulbs with the equivalent CFL bulbs, we only use 20 watts for the same brightness. With CFLs, we would be spending:
12 bulbs * 4 hours * 20 watts = 960 watt hours (also known as .96 Kilowatt hours).
At 10 cents per Kilowatt hour, your bill would be 9.6 cents per day. Over 365 days that comes to $35.04 for the year.
So by replacing 12 bulbs, you will save nearly $100 per year.
CFLs now cost around $2 each, take just a few seconds to install, and last about 5 years.
