Five Percent: Conserve a Little Energy

It’s pretty clear that LED is indeed the lighting of the future — CFL is an important, yet transitional technology. But LED is not ready for prime time — still too expensive, and still not bright enough, and still not suitable for many applications … yet.

But LED makers are doing everything they can to get people to buy, according to an article in the Green Inc. blog of the New York Times. Consider this point, made about a newly announced LED bulb:

…for starters, the advertised light output of the Pharox is about 300 “lumens” — the metric used for measuring the light coming off a bulb. That places it somewhere between a 25-watt and 40-watt incandescent. A 60-watt incandescent emits up to 900 lumens.

The company explained that the light output is comparable to a 60-watt bulb, depending on where one uses the bulb and for what purpose. “There are 60-watt soft tone/flame bulbs that generate less light than a Pharox 6-watt,” the company said.

Please, let’s be realistic: when we’re talking about comparing light bulbs that look like “regular” bulbs, as the Pharox does, I think it’s appropriate to compare their output to the same bulbs. (more…)

Here’s a chart of our electricity use at home over the last four years, showing an almost 50% reduction in use over the course of four years, saving us $118 per month at our current rate. You can make the same kinds of changes we have — nothing we have done is exotic, and nothing has really affected the quality of our lives.

One Half As Much Saves $118 Per Month

Conservation is about as un-sexy as it gets; but it works and is easy for electricity. Measuring our gas bill is a little harder, but I have to think we have made some progress there, too. I did a calculation on our water bill, and that one is stunning, as well.

Conservation may be dull, but saving money is cool, and it’s very easy to save a pretty substantial amount. One way to think about saving money by conservation is that it is like tax-free income! Between state and federal taxes, you probably pay from 20% to 50% of your income; if you got a $118/month raise, you would see less thant $100 of it, maybe as little as $59! But if you conserve, it’s tax free income. (more…)

Replace?

But before I get too complicated, I think it’s safe to say that if you don’t have working lights now, and are buying new ones for decoration, LED is definitely the best choice.

So go ahead and replace your lights, right? Not so fast. By “replace” do you mean get rid of the working ones you have now and buy ones? It’s a bit trickier in this case, but here are some facts that might help you decide. (more…)

Have you been dissatisfied with CFL (compact fluorescent) light bulbs? You’re not alone!

I have found and tested a number of bulbs and found several specific bulbs that I believe solve most of the issues people have had with CFL bulbs. I have tried a lot of bad bulbs, but the winners are GE Energy Smart CFL bulbs. There are a few in this line that are not good, but I have tested each of the ones below.

There are a few things to keep in mind about what to expect from CFL bulbs. See below for more details, but first, my recommendations!

My Recommended Best CFL Bulbs (updated 2/2009)

Also Available in Stores

These bulbs are also available widely at local retailers like Walgreen, Walmart and many others. Bulb costs generally run about $7 — more for higher wattages or specialty bulbs, and are available in 3-packs and 6-packs in some cases.
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I am on a mission to find only top quality CFL bulbs that won’t disappoint. (Update 9/08: Mission accomplished; see my CFL Review here)

Why? There are a lot of really bad CFLs out there. This is probably why most of my friends and family who aren’t quite as, um, obsessive as I about this kind of thing have given it a good try, but been sorely disappointed.

So I am still on a mission, and will report back in a while, but until then, I did find one site that lists a number of different bulbs with honest assesments, and actually has CFL reviews by real people. (more…)

Several readers have posted comments suggesting I look into Earth Hour US. It’s an effort to raise awareness, participants will turn off their lights for one hour on Friday March 29th at 8pm. It’s a small step, of course, but I think we can all learn from taking small steps.

A few years ago, we started taking small steps in our household to conserve energy. Our energy usage continues to fall, year over year since we started; we continue to become more and more aware of how we use energy that provides no benefit. I’ll bet we use at least 1/3 less energy now than in the past, yet none of the changes we have made have made any significant impact on how we live our life. It all started with a relatively small step.

Put the date on your calendar and join the others across the world taking this small first step.

I went to Home Depot today for dimmable CFLs, a water heater blanket, a low-flow shower head, leaf bags and a few other things. After walking around aimlessly, I found the water heater blankets (out of stock), the CFL display (which was LAME!) and shower heads, all but one of which was the opposite of low-flow (several low flow models were out of stock). Oh, and no more leaf bags. Grumble. (more…)

A few weeks back I wrote about Carter’s idea to make a Wind Turbine costume and hand out free compact fluorescent bulbs for Halloween. It was a great, great success. First, the picture:

and a few more in the album. Carter built it with some help from me, he and his friend Nicky gave out free CFLs (which is harder than it might seem), and we all learned just how much work there is to be done. (Update: 10/2008 — better options for CFLs now available)

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If every one of the 110 Million households in the USA changed just one light bulb to CFL, this would reduce the total output of CO₂ emissions in the United States by around 2.6%. Do I have my math right? What assumptions are going into this. It seemed kind of implausible, to be honest. But I think the numbers check out. Have I made an error? (more…)

Carter, our 10-year-old son, had a great idea a few nights ago: give Compact Fluorescent (CFL) Bulbs back to grown-ups who hand out candy this Halloween. We were talking about costumes, and Carter wanted to be a cactus, then a man dressed in duct-tape clothing (he can make anything out of duct tape!), but then … a wind turbine Halloween costume! Hmmm, we thought — a wind turbine would be a great, simple and really fun Halloween costume. We talked about other alternative energy costumes (solar panels, hydro-electric plants, etc.). but the wind turbine is now in progress. I’ll post a picture when it’s all done.

But then came the idea about giving each neighbor a CFL in exchange for the candy (more…)

I just watched an episode of Living with Ed which plays on HGTV (Home and Garden TV, I guess?). I learned a few things. For example, it hadn’t occurred to me that compact fluorescent lights produce less heat, which is good in the summer, and just a lousy way to heat your house in the winter.

Or, if you have a pool, you don’t need to clean it as much, and you can use ozone instead of chlorine. I don’t have a pool, but if I did, I would have been able to make a simple change: reset the timer.

It’s a good show — funny, light hearted, and useful. And, it’s set outside of Hollywood, so there are always friends who just happen to be movie stars showing up. Give it a look. (more…)

We started our conservation efforts in late September 2005, about the time I started this blog. Using data from our electricity bills, which report the number of Kilowatt Hours (KwH) used in each billing cycle, transferred the data to Excel and made the chart below.

Bottom line: we have reduced our total consumption of electricity by more than 40% on average. A little better than my 5%, eh? (more…)

We have had some pretty surprising successes in our efforts to reduce energy consumption. But there are a number of things we have tried that don’t work as well as we want. (more…)

Last year around this time I tried a dimmable R-40 floodlight that didn’t really work. On the advice of a commenter on that post, I ordered some Greenlite R40 23W dimmable floods and they are a very good replacement for our incandescent R40 floodlights. (more…)

Environmental Defense has the slogan “Finding the Ways that Work” which is exactly what we’re trying to do. They have a campaign going asking a simple thing: pledge to change a light bulb to a Compact Fluorescent (CF). It’s simple and think hard: isn’t there one light you could replace?

Our experience with CF has been great. We now have them in (more…)