Saving Money and the Planet with Greener Indoor Lighting Technology

When we upgraded from our old '60s vintage house to our brand new house, one of our favorite features was the many overhead light fixtures that brightened the house, including fourteen flood lights that illuminated the kitchen and attached living room of our house. Those fourteen lights brightened the house far better than the multiple floor lamps we had at our other house. Unfortunately, when turned on, all fourteen 65 watt bulbs drew 910 watts of power, almost enough power to run a space heater, an expensive proposition when you think about the fact they'd be running for hours every single day of the year. After doing the math I decided I would make it my mission to save myself a little money and go green by replacing my incandescent lights with compact fluorescent light bulbs.

WHAT ARE COMPACT FLUORESCENT LIGHT BULBS (CFLs)

Compact Fluorescent Lights are essentially a form of fluorescent lighting, like the overhead tube lighting in office buildings, that have been scaled down to fit into the space of a normal light bulb.. According to cnet.com the greener Compact Fluorescent Light Bulbs were invented by Ed Hammer of General Electric in 1976 as a response to the energy crisis of that time. GE decided not to pursue the technology because of the cost of creating factories to produce the new lights. Eventually the details leaked out and other companies started producing these green energy savers.

WHAT ARE THE ADVANTAGES OF COMPACT FLUORESCENT LIGHT BULBS?

• Compact Fluorescent Light Bulbs produce light equivalent to normal incandescent light bulbs for about 1/4th of the electricity, bringing your electric bill down.
• CFLs burn cooler than incandescent light bulbs, providing less impact to your yearly cooling bill
• Under normal use CFLs will last many years without need for replacement
• CFLs allow for the placement of far brighter bulbs into light fixtures rated for low wattages (for example, a 100 watt equivalent CFL can be placed into a fixture rated for 60 watts incandescent)
• The longer life of a compact fluorescent light bulbs makes them useful for difficult to reach fixtures on places like high ceilings

WHAT ARE THE DISADVANTAGES OF COMPACT FLUORESCENT LIGHT BULBS?

• Compact Fluorescent Light Bulbs contain mercury, creating a health hazard if the lamps are broken or disposed of improperly, decreasing their "green" profile
• CFLs take time to get to full intensity, especially those inside flood lamps, although newer "instant on" Compact Fluorescent Light Bulbs cut that time considerably.
• Light output decreases over the life of the bulb
• CFLs fail to start or take longer time to reach full intensity in cold weather
• Quality is less consistant among Compact Fluorescent Light Bulb brands and manufacturers, resulting in different color and intensity of light from the same rating of CFLs
• Normal Compact Fluorescent Light Bulbs cannot be used with 3 way light fixtures and dimmer switches, although there are CFLs designed for this purpose
• Lights can smoke and emit odors when they go bad

LED LIGHTING

Another green technology in the pipeline is Light Emitting Diode Bulbs. These bulbs combine a number of small LEDs (the lights you find inside digital clocks and front panels of VCRs, game systems and other high tech devices) into a single light bulb. LED lighting currently can most often be found in traffic signals, flashlights and car tail lights. The advantage of Light Emitting Diodes is that they last for many years, run cooler, and are very durable. However, the technology is in its infancy for home use, and the bulbs are expensive and often do not provide the same quality light as a decent incandescent or Compact Fluorescent Bulb.

HOW MUCH MONEY CAN YOU SAVE?

There are many different calculators online to help you project how much money you could save with CFLs. By my estimation I have replaced 50 bulbs in my house with compact Fluorescent Lights. Let's assume for simplicity's sake that all 50 of these lights were regular 60 watt bulbs. Plugging this into General Electric's savings calculator and assuming electricity is 10 cents a kilowatt hour, I would save $328.00 a year and $1800 over the life of the bulbs. That's for an investment of about $100 in light bulbs. Put another way, if I had every light bulb turned on in my house, before I would have had 3000 watts of power (the power of two space heaters) running. By switching to Compact Fluorescent Bulbs, my energy consumption would drop to 650 watts.