An interesting question indeed. Can those little curly compact fluorescent light bulbs actually save you money on your power bill? The answer is yes! When comparing compact fluorescent light bulbs to the traditional incandescent light bulbs you need to consider a few things. One is light color. Another is wattage and the third is initial cost.
Light color is something that ultimately comes down to preference and I will admit that before compact fluorescent lights were out, I was just fine with the soft white light that was produced by the typical incandescent bulb. However, now that compact fluorescent bulbs have flooded the market you can now compare different light colors to best illuminate your space. There are fluorescent bulbs out there that are made to mimic the soft white light that is put off by the traditional incandescent bulb. These are marketed as soft light or warm light bulbs. These will give you the closest color to traditional incandescent light color that you can get from a fluorescent. Going up from there you have the popular natural and daylight light colors. These lights tend to have a white to blueish color and are made to mimic the natural sunlight that illuminates your home. To figure out which one is right for you, I recommend that you buy a few of each color and try them out and see which one you like best. You may prefer the daylight models in a home office or living room while the more traditional soft white, yellowish color fits your bedroom better. Just try them out and pick whatever looks best to you!
The next thing to consider is wattage. You will want to look at this not only from a savings perspective but from an illumination perspective as well. The ratings on compact fluorescent bulbs show us what kind of light they put off as if they were equivalent to their incandescent counterparts. For example, the replacement for a typical 60 watt traditional incandescent bulb is normally around a 13 watt fluorescent. This will normally be stated on the packaging. It will say something like 60 watt replacement or 60 watt equivalent. This helps us out because our light fixtures are rated for wattage as well. So, if for instance our living room fixture contains four 60 watt incandescent bulbs and we want to replace them and have the equivalent amount of light, we would need to buy four 60 watt equivalent, in this case 13 watt, bulbs.
The other thing to consider with the wattage is the amount that the new fluorescent bulb can save us on our power bill. Using the 60 watt bulb as an example. The rating of 60 watts means that if the bulb were turned on for one hour it would consume or use 60 watts of electricity. So, if we use the fluorescent bulb instead of the incandescent bulb we would use 13 watts in that hour instead of 60 watts. A difference of 47 watts!
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Now, before you get all exited because the fluorescent bulb uses almost five times less power than the incandescent bulb you need to remember that the fluorescent bulb costs more initially. Now, the price of these bulbs has come way down in the past few years but it is still a consideration to take into account. Remember when I said before that buying and installing fluorescent bulbs instead of incandescent bulbs would lower your power bill? I said that it would. However, there is a huge but in there. The lighting load in your home is one of the lowest loads in your home. Let me illustrate.
Let’s say you have a typical three bedroom, two bathroom home. You have a fan in every bedroom that has four lights each and one in the living that has four lights. You also have two lamps in the living room as well. The kitchen has a single light fixture over the sink and a four light fixture in the middle. The bathroom has a four light fixture over the mirror and a one light fixture close to the toilet. The front and back doors each have a light outside and you have a two light fixture with spotlights on two corners outside. We will assume that all of the inside lights and the porch lights are 60 watt bulbs and the spotlights are 150 watt bulbs.
We have a total of 30, 60 watt bulbs and 4, 150 watt bulbs. 30 bulbs x 60 watts = 1,800 watts. 4 spotlights x 150 watts = 600 watts. 1,800 watt + 600 watts = 2,400 watts. That is just basic math that says that if all of your lights were on for one hour they would use 2,400 watts. Let’s put that in terms of dollars. First let’s remember that we are billed on kilowatt hours which means we need to divide 2,400 watts by 1,000. That equals 2.4 kwh. Assume a $0.12 per kwh and it costs 2.4 kwh x $0.12 and we get $0.288 to run all of our lights for one hour. Are you surprised? Now let’s do the calculation for the 13 watt equivalent. 30 x 13 = 390 watts. 4 x 40 = 160 watts. 390 + 160 = 550 watts / 1,000 = 0.55 x 0.12 = $0.066 for one hour. A big difference for sure but not one that you will likely notice. Let’s now assume all of the lights were on for 24 hours per day for 30 days. 24 x 30 = 720 x $0.288 = $207.36. And, 720 x .066 = $47.52. Now it looks like a huge difference but you have to remember that you do not typically turn on all of your lights at the same time. You may not even use some of them on a regular basis. I am not trying to say this to discourage you from buying fluorescent lights. I am saying this to let you know that they do help you out in the long run. You will save money in the long run but do not expect a drastic change in your bill from one month to the next. If you would like to know how to calculate your power bill follow the link to my page where I explain how your bill is calculated.
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