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I just picked up a cool $500, $516 to be exact. Here’s the best part, I expect I’ll get that same $516 each year until 2013 or $3612. What did I have to do to earn this money? I invested $332 and 3 hours of my time doing something that nearly anyone can do, no special knowledge skills or abilities required. Too good to be true you say? Check it out:
Behold the compact fluorescent light bulb! In June, I took an inventory of the lighting in our household. I was shocked to discover that we had 95 individual light bulbs. 95! Of those 95 bulbs, 83 were candidates for replacement of incandescent with compact fluorescent. When the inventory was taken, not only did I note the type of bulb but also the wattage. A quick trip to Costco later, I set about replacing those 83 bulbs in the course of an hour. Total time invested (including travel and shopping time at Costco) – three hours.
I was able to look at my utility bill and compare it with the same time period last year and with the period this year prior to replacement and the difference was dramatic in electricity billing: August 2006 my electricity bill was $176 and in August 2007 it was $132, a difference of $43 per month. If the last complete billing period without the CFLs is compared to August 2006, it’s a little more. My May 2007 bill was $178 (I replaced the bulbs in June and got some benefit in the month, but I don’t remember the exact date – so May is the first apples to apples comparison and we were on vacation in July, so that’s not a great comparator either.)
I’ve seen many claims about CFLs, but here is cold, hard data. I think it’s understated because it’s summer time and we’re not using the lights as much as we do in the winter months, I’ll keep an eye on that comparison for December through March and will report back. But there are some other benefits I expect as well.
CFLs last 13 times longer than incandescent light bulbs. If that is the case (and we won’t know for some time) then I expect that I’ll realize another $475 on light bulb purchases over the next 7 years, meaning the total benefit is now over $4,000.
And, since we’re using less power, I expect there is an environmental benefit too. Based on actual consumption differences, we’re saving around 200 kwh/month which equates to 16.8 megawatt hours over the next seven years. That means we’ll reduce our carbon dioxide footprint by about 8 tons and our NOX/SOX emissions by about 100 pounds.
Will you get the same benefits I’m seeing? Well your mileage will vary. From what I can uncover, the average US household has 53 light bulbs. If you replace 45 of them, you’ll get a pretty good benefit. Where else can you save big hunks of money and have a positive impact on the environment so easily and cheaply?
Small update: if you’re thinking about mercury issues, please read the comment trail. Also, please feel free to comment, I do moderate (but to control spam, not content.)
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I put together a short article showing people exactly how to calculate how much they’ll save by using CFL bulbs on my website at – here’s the link:
How to Calculate the Savings from using Compact Fluorescent Light (CFL) Bulbs
Great post Kevin, that was very close to how I figured it. However, out here in PG&E land there are multiple rate tiers and prices per kwh. So if you’re a heavy power user (i.e., have a big home) you’ll get much more benefit than if you’re in the lower use tiers. For example, the top rate tier here is $0.32/kwh and the base rate is $0.11/kwh.
This idea of a calculator is a good one though if it can handle those nuances.
Crikey, you have a *lot* of lightbulbs!
Turning them off when they are not used is probably a good idea too. A colleague of mine has a PIR detector in her hall/landing that comes on and off automatically.
ZeBadger, you’re right. I was shocked to see how many we had in the house. Putting a device that automatically shuts them off would be a great idea too. Perhaps I’ll do that as I have no luck getting my family to turn them off! I patrol constantly turning off lights….
Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m all for using CFLs instead of incandescent bulbs, but I have to point out that SAVING $500 is not the same as GETTING $500.
Also, if you are actually going to do a real comparison of the two on how them impact the environment, etc., you need to take into account the energy used to make a CFL vs. an incandescent bulb, along with things like the impact of the mercury used in the CFL, and probably a lot of other stuff that I have no clue about. Additionally, in my experience, CFLs rarely if ever last as long as they claim. I’ve been using them for years and have to replace them frequently. In my estimation, they probably only last 3-4 times longer than an equivalent incandescent bulb. And they can’t be used everywhere you can use an incandescent bulb, e.g. they burn out very fast when used in recessed lighting, because the lack of adequate cooling.
Yes, I use CFLs, because I spend less money on my monthly electric bill. But that is VERY VERY different than using them because I get additional money. Reasoning like that is why people buy stuff they don’t need just because it is on sale. It is bad logic, and makes anyone who bases an argument on it look like they don’t actually know what they are talking about.
Have a great day. I hope these comments don’t seem too contrarian, I really am in favor of CFLs.
–jed
http://www.jeddaniels.com
Fair point Jed, saving $500 vs. getting $500. But, it’s found money just the same.
I don’t have data yet on what the longevity is on these lamps, the package rates them as 10,000 hours (vs. 750 for an incandescent.) I’ve seen 6,000 to 12,000 hours claimed. Guess I’ll have to report periodically in on failures….
On production, they are very similar to produce, on mercury, these bulbs have 5mg per bulb. The incandescent bulb will account for 25mg of mercury release from coal burning over 10,000 hours of use. The CFL will account for 5.75mg over the same period plus the mercury in the bulb which equals 10.75mg, still a savings.
So, they’re not perfect, but they definitely are better! Can you share what your savings has been since you’re using the bulbs?
Thanks for the comment.
don’t spend it all in one place.
“Can you share what your savings has been since you’re using the bulbs?”
Unfortunately, no. I’ve lived in 3 houses in the last 4 years in drastically different climates, and I didn’t replace them all at once (one-by-one as the incandescent burned out), so I have no way to do an apples-to-apples comparison.
When I started getting serious about saving electricity, I went and bought a Kill-A-Watt load meter and spent a month measuring everything in my house including various lights. It turns out most of my usage is from my computers (I have several servers running 24×7), and from the AC necessary to cool the servers down (almost 60% for the two combined). Lighting accounted for less than 15% of the overall usage, according to my quick back-of-the-napkin calculations. The biggest improvement I’ve been able to make was replacing my ancient washer and drier with shiny new front loaders that use about 25% as much electricity and 10% as much detergent. Those paid for themselves in about 6 months.
I try to buy CFLs when they are on sale to help offset the extra cost, and always take advantage of the local electric utility’s occasional rebate programs. I haven’t tracked hourly usage, but there are some CFL bulbs in my house that I’ve had to replace at least twice in the two years that I’ve been here. Of course that is nothing compared to changing incandescents every 3-6 months, but it certainly isn’t a 10+ times increase either.
–jed
http://www.jeddaniels.com
Just make sure you purchase legitimate CFL’s in the first place; so-called bargain CFL’s can burn out in less than 24 hours.
I understand what you are trying to accomplish here, but it is a little misguided. I would say look into led lights instead, for is you were to see how much mercury is used to make these bulbs…
Thanks Jed, I have a killawatt and am looking around for opportunities with that too. Cheers. Unfortunately, my appliances are all pretty new….but I do have a wicked parasite load I’m chasing.
Alice, I’ve used Philips bulbs. AIUI, all bulbs are produced in China and there isn’t much choice. Do you have other information you could share?
Badong, please read the comments. While it is true, there is mercury, even with the mercury it’s a better solution than incandescent.
With regard to LED, I looked into these and there were two problems: the bulbs cost $40 a piece (admittedly for a 100,000 hour lifetime) and they are directional only – non-directional lights aren’t yet available to my knowledge.
Does using less power mean that lighter, cheaper wiring and fuses are a future possibility? what about LED lights? could they be powered from low voltage DC? Even cheaper wiring, right? What will the construction and electrical lobbies do about this? Will it benefit the North American culture? Could using less copper wire help the environment? What does the trade-off with CFLs look like when these ideas are factored in? Is there less likelihood of fire from wires carrying lower currents required by CFLs? If we use more microwave cooking do we get the same savings? Is this a revolution ?
Hey Kevin,
Hate to be the dark cloud on this sunny experience… But CFL’s have high levels of mercury in them and should not be disposed in household trash…Local municipalities are currently trying to figure out how to deal with this problem… Be careful with handling these lights..
and what about the fact that these energy saving bulbs contain mercury… Not only do they contain mercury but the manufacturers don’t disclose this on the box nor do they advise how to dispose of them properly.
I live in New Zealand and all of our energy saving bulbs contain mercury. Granted, in your country it might be different but I strongly advise doing some research for your own safety.
Uncle B, great questions. Perhaps a future blog entry will address them.
Commenters Paul and Erica – as stated in the prior comments:
—-
Mercury, these bulbs have 5mg per bulb. The incandescent bulb will account for 25mg of mercury release from coal burning over 10,000 hours of use. The CFL will account for 5.75mg over the same period plus the mercury in the bulb which equals 10.75mg, still a savings.
—-
There are no perfect solutions, but CFLs even with mercury are an improvement.
On recycling, there is not a clear way to do this. I will do more research and post the answer here. You are both right, they need to be recycled and should NOT be placed in a regular waste stream.
Uncle B:
Unfortunately lighter wiring is probably not an option here – although fluorescent lights save energy overall, they require a high current initially to start them, and swapping to a thinner wire would increase the fire risk.
On the subject of mercury: CFLs are responsible for less mercury overall, which is great, but the danger with the mercury built into the bulbs is that it leaks into landfill when disposed of in the trash. Mercury emitted at power stations has a less concentrated effect. I’m not sure about the US, but businesses and local councils are slowly starting to organise fluorescent recycling here in Australia, but it’s taking a while.
Uncle B,
I could argue that dispersing mercury at the power station is actually much worse. At least there is a chance of capturing the mercury during recycling.
However, I do know that a mercury filtration process is available for the emissions process, it’s not used as widely as it could be here as it’s not specified in the regulations.
Regardless of source, CFL and/or coal plants, less mercury is better.
On the other subject of wiring specifically, I don’t know myself. I think the more interesting notion in the questions you posed earlier could be generalized to “given new technologies like CFLs, high R value windows, smart drywall, what sorts of changes might we expect in construction techniques and practices?”
That’s a pretty interesting question.
Thanks for the comments everyone; they make this a much more interesting and rich entry!
While there is no doubt that the compact fluorescent light bulb use less power, and last longer, their are other factors to consider. The mercury issue has been raised already, I would like to mention that the brightness of the light dims well before the stated 100,000 hours life of the fluorescent light. Further the fluorescent light generate light in frequencies over a wider range than incandescent bulbs, and that some of those frequencies affect eye sight. I have notices a slight loss in eye site from using fluorescence lights, as has my family.
Hi James,
Interesting about the brightness. The only difference I can detect as yet is in the startup period of the first 30 second or so. It’s about 60% of full brightness and grows to full illumination.
On lifetime, I think you meant 10,000 hours vs. 100,000 hours (LED lifetime.) Popular Mechanics magazine had a great article testing CFLs against each other and incandescent lights across the color and brightness scale. Modern CFLs beat the incandescents across the board. Cheap CFLs are a roll of the dice…
On eye sight, that’s troubling. How do you know it’s the lighting? I can understand suspicions about the lighting, but how do you know? Have you replaced the bulbs and the deterioration has stopped? I’m just curious about that ascertion.
Thanks for the comment.
interesting calculation,
In response to Jed on saving vs getting money & on mercury in CFL’s.
—
As far as I can see, there are roughly 3 types of discounted items we should be concerned with. 1) There are things which you would already have purchased in absence of a discount, 2 ) there are tradeoffs with things you would have purchased in absence of a discount, and 3) there are items which without discount you would not have purchased, and don’t trade off with something you would have otherwise gotten.
the 3rd category is the one you fairly clearly referance, and this does not represent any savings, it is in fact a loss of money (for some gain of enjoyment, I don’t really care for this example if the enjoyment/$ amount would make it worth buying compared the returns you could get spending your money elsewhere.)
The 1st category I mentioned is things you would have purchased in absence of any discount. If you had been, and would continue to pay $50 a month for water, and it’s suddenly $25, you have $25 more a month in your bank account than you otherwise would, you can claim these as savings.
The 2nd category lies somewhere between. If you’re paying less for the same or better service, you can claim savings equal to the difference, but not the discount. So say you normally pay $5 for knockoff cereal, and would choose to do so again in absence of a better deal, but suddenly name brand stuff is on sale for $4 – versus your normal decisions this nets you a gain of $1 which I think can be fairly named savings & is really as good monetarily as buying the $5 dollar knockoff and having someone give you a dollar. You also gain a bit more in this situation though because you’re upgrading – this type of stuff falls under the 1st category where you start thinking about enjoyment gained per dollar spent. You may well get better enjoyment per dolar for the name brand stuff discounted from $8 to $6 than had you purchased the normal priced knockoff at $5… but you cannot claim $2 savings. in fact you’re down a dollar and there’s no way around that(you may be happier having spent the money there than you could have been spending the money on anything else in the world, it may have been a very wise decision… but you’re still down a dollar)
I think the enoyment per dollar stuff is pretty irrelevant on CFL’s vs incandescent… they both serve the same purpose, and basically equally well. There may be antecdotal things like decreased vision cited above, but I have yet to see any actual research coming to any conclusions like that, and given the amount of research on CFL’s in recent years I’d be quite suprised if those andecdotes are a)true and b)actually causally related to the lighting. I also think in any industrialized nation for the vast majority of the population, you are going to be paying for some type of lighting, that’s not a cost you can simply avoid altogether.
So this lies somewhere between types 1 and 2… the light bulbs themselves fall into #2 – but a fairly clean tradeoff where claiming some savings on the cost of bulbs over time wouldnt be that unjustified. The power purchased from the electric company to power your lights is a pretty clear #1, you’re paying less for the same service you would have payed for in absence of the discount (keeping your lights on).
To put it another way, which would you prefer, a contract forcing you to stick with incandescents which pays you $50 a month, but leaves you with a $200 a month energy bill, or using CFL’s and getting a $150 energy bill(ignoring minor differences in cost of bulbs themselves/hour of life, which favor CFL’s). They’re a complete wash – if your alternative really is paying the full amount, a discount is just as good as getting handed that much money.
So, I agree, reasoning things in category 3, and even many things in category 2, as savings equal to the amount of money knocked off the ticket price is bad reasoning. But all items in the 1st category, and many in the 2nd, are literally as good as getting money.
—
On mercury in CFL’s.
(others I see after writing this have beat me to the punch on this, these numerbs are slightly different, i’ve seen them in a number of places, but can’t off the top of my head recall where exactly. Fairly similar statistics though)
A CFL contains 4 mg of mercury on average. Over it’s lifetime, power plants will release an additional 2.4 mg of mercury into the environment. Over that same period of time, incandescent lighting will cause power plants to release 10 mg. On the whole, we’re a lot better with the 6.4 from a CFL to that 10 from an incandescent.
—
Both of these are really about tradeoff costs, the question is not so much are CFLs cheap or non-polluting, it’s about what other options would you use in the absence of CFL’s, and how does using them compare to the cost of use, both monetary and to the environment/human health.
Owen, what a great, value-added comment. Thanks for taking the time to compose and share your views.
Mike,
Thanks for a great article on a very interesting topic. I myself blogged on this back in April.
I had found an article about it and decided to switch my lights to CFL within my house. With this we have saved over $300 in the five months that we have switched. Thanks again for the great article.
Jason, great entry. Thanks for sharing. It’s good to know that others are seeing the same sort of impact.
I so thought this was going to be yet another MLM scam type promotion (found the article on Stumble Upon).
Almost gave it the thumbs down. Good post. We’ve just converted to CFL, so too early to see the bills reduce – but confident I’ll see a big difference.
THUMBS UP 🙂
Clangnuts, thanks for the endorsement. Yeah, that first paragraph is lurid, glad you read on…If you think of it, drop another post when you can see the impact on your utility bill, I’d love to see more data. Good luck!
[…] 87% of a home’s light fixtures has reduced electricity demand by 25%. That’s hard data, a story about it is available here. Small choices like this made across a community can have a large impact. Regardless of where one […]
I cannot understand why someone would argue that saving $500 is not the same as earning $500. If you increase your earnings by $500 you lose 40-50% of it in taxes; if you *save* $500 you are not taxed on the savings at all… at least not yet.
GE compact flourescents can be gotten at Wal*Mart in our area for around $2.00 per lamp. 100 watt GE CF lamps originally were 1700 lumens; they are now 1750. They still bother my 63 year old eyes slightly (I feel like I forgot to take my 10,000 IUs of vitamin A). But they are far better than other brands which I took back to the stores. The slow startup brightness is often a plus, everywhere but stairwells; especially when you are turning on lamps in a room at night. We have six lighting our 960 sq. ft. garage and ten in the storage room above that. Which brings me to my question.
Two of the GE 1750 lumen CF lamps quit in the storage room before they were used more than a few months. Both burned out in the last celing receptacle in the string. The room lighting is on its own circuit breaker originally wired for ten 75 watt incadescent lamps in insulation contact fixtures with a 4 inch opening at the bottom. The CF lamps project a half inch below the trim ring. So why is that last lamp burning out?
GE says not to use CF lighting in completely enclosed recessed fixtures (it is printed right on the bulb base). They also told me that their lamps will burned our prematurely if they are turned on and off in a short time. We do neither. In our basement we have four 8 ft. fluorescent fixtures with a string of incadescent bulbs with pull chains along side them for a quick look in a file cabinet, etc.
Nice web site Mike.
Jesse
Hi Jesse,
Thanks for the comment. I don’t know what’s causing that last light to burn out. I wonder if there might be voltage might be fluctutating in that fixture (i.e., simulating on/off cycles in some way – I don’t mean competely on/off, just enough to damage the electronics in the lamp.)
The thing to remember about screw in CFLs is that they are actually lamps, a ballast/controller along with the bulb. Other commenters, do you have ideas for Jesse?
Thanks,
Mike
[…] – Want to get $3,500? – A post about how much electricity (money) I’m saving with a big bang switch over to compact […]
[…] in June, 2007. In fact, one of the most popular entries ever to appear in this blog was titled “Want to get $3,500?” which talks about the inventory, method, and expected savings of replacing standard lighting with […]
[…] Electricity Usage Post-CFL (2006 no CFLs) Regular readers of this blog will recognize that in June, 2007 we replaced 83 of our 95 light bulbs with compact fluorescent lamps. Since that time, we’ve averaged savings on our electric bill of $42.77/month and now have […]
[…] Want to get $3,500? – A quick and practical way to save serious money… – Link to Entry […]
Great article. I am now at net-zero on my own home. We do have 12 solar pv panels, but that only makes about $50 worth of juice each month. I lived off-grid for a bit and found out real quick that lighting and Power-Vampires had to be kept in check if I wanted to not drain the batteries before sunrise the next day. Smart-Strips are a great way to kill Power-Vampires. We use them on every tv, computer station and stereo.
Shameless plug…we do carry them for $30- along with good cfl’s in the right color, and dimmable, 3 way, etc.
All the best,
Chris
http://www.NewLeafAmerica.com
Thanks for your comment Chris and for the pointer on smart strips.