How to Cut 20 Percent Off Your Electric Bill

Just over a year ago, I took to heart all that I had been hearing about the energy (and money) you can save by using compact fluorescent lights (CFLs). It sounded good to me, so I made the commitment to switch out all the incandescent bulbs in the house. And as long as I was going to take this step, I wanted to document my results (see graph). I took no other steps but switching out the lights. Although I did go to one slightly bigger expense, replacing four frequently-used fluorescent fixtures with new Energy Star fluorescents. But I have not replaced any appliances, been fanatical about energy usage, or even been particularly careful about turning lights out that aren't used. I also have six outside lights that I leave burning at night for security reasons.

First, I took an inventory of all the incandescent lights in the house. That was surprising. I had 60 incandescent bulbs! Beyond that there were the four fluorescent lights I mentioned, but that accounts for every light in the house. My plan was to replace all the most commonly used incandescent bulbs immediately with CFLs. That was about half of them. Then as bulbs burned out in the rest of the fixtures, I replaced them with CFLs rather than standard light bulbs.

As I knew from years of experience as a home owner, incandescent bulbs expire with frustrating regularity. And I wasn't sure what to do with the incandescent bulbs I removed. After all they still worked, I hated to just toss them. So the actual procedure I used after making the first replacements of the high-usage bulbs was to use up all the rest of the incandescent bulbs before replacing any with CFLs. For this reason, I actually still have 8-10 incandescent lights in the house (about 10% of my total lights).

Another benefit touted for CFLs is that they last longer. I can assure, they do. In the last year, while I was using up the remaining 20-30 incandescent bulbs I had, I only replaced two CFLs in the entire house. And the price for CFLs has come down considerably since I started, so the replacement cost of the later bulbs has been less.

I may not have gone to the expense of buying the new Energy Star fluorescent fixtures (and fluorescent bulbs - neither the old fixtures or bulbs are interchangeable with the new), but the local utility company was giving rebates for installing them, so my capital outlay was decreased substantially. You should always check for rebates from the government and utility companies when making energy-saving upgrades, there are a number of rebates and programs out there and some changes can be covered by multiple programs. I also decided that these fluorescents got used often enough that not changing them out might skew my results.

The graph of my results shows that every month of 2008 had a noticeably lower average daily Kilowatt/hour (Kwh) usage than the corresponding month in 2007. In fact, the decrease in the monthly average over the entire year was 5Kwh. What that means is that over a month with 30 days, dropping the average daily usage by 5Kwh and using 7.5 cents/Kwh as the cost, I saved $11.25. Multiply that by 12 and you get $135/year, just from using CFLs and Energy Star fluorescents.

To be completely honest, I did not track my expenses for changing out the bulbs or the fluorescents, so I don't know what my upfront costs were. But $135 will buy you more CFLs than I have in my house right now, and they last longer. I figure I have broken even and from here on, its all savings.