Five Percent: Conserve Energy

Surprisingly Close To Incandescent

There’s some progress, but we’re still not quite there. Home Depot is selling a Philips LED light bulb: same brightness as a 60W incandescent bulb (in other words, dim), same shape as standard A19 bulb, same color temperature and color rendering index, and dimmable, uses 12W, and lasts for 25,000 hours — Cost: $40.

A comparable CFL, (although not dimmable) costs about $1.50 and uses 13W and lasts 8,000 hours.

A comparable incandescent costs around $1 and uses 60W and lasts about 1,000 hours.

Some math. Compared to incandescent:

• CFL and LED both use about 1/5th as much electricity
• LED lasts 25x longer, CFL lasts 8x longer

So let’s think about lifetime cost. (more…)

Always On (photo: uberculture)

The only way to find out: measure each outlet with a Kill-A-Watt! (Can you say “obsessive“?) But occasional obsessiveness is good for the soul. And budget.

So on the last grey Saturday, me and my trusty Kill-a-Watt went around seeing if we could answer the question: how much could we save?

The answer was neither encouraging nor discouraging: it was simply illuminating. (And, another $70/year, tax free savings — see the link to my spreadsheet below.)

And isn’t that what it’s all about? (more…)

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 10/2010)

Brand	Model	Style	As Bright As	Comments	Manufacturer Info/Picture	Where To Buy
GE	15517	Standard Bulb, Spiral	100W	Bright, but a little bigger than a regular 100W incandescent	GE Lighting 100W CFL	Amazon
GE	15516	Standard Bulb, Spiral	75W	Good for replacing 60W if brightness is a concern	GE Lighting 75W CFL	Amazon
GE	24685	3-Way Bulb, Spiral	50/100/150W	Considerably larger than a regular bulb; didn’t fit in one of the table lamps I tried, with longer warm-up time, but it’s good for our application	GE Lighting 50/100/150 Spiral CFL	Amazon
GE	47487	Glass Covered	60W – 75W	Shaped like a regular bulb, so good for spring-clip shades. Recommend 75W or more for reading	GE Lighting 60W A Shape	Amazon
GE	47486	Standard Bulb, “A” type, pear shape	40W	Another pear-shaped bulb, even less bright, but very nice for ambiance. Good for ceiling fans or ceiling fixtures with two bulbs	GE Lighting 40W A-Shaped	Google Search
GE	47483	Outdoor Floodlight	90W	Nice and bright, and withstands moisture, etc.	GE Lighting Outdoor Flood	Amazon

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.

I encourage you to buy from Amazon through the link below, as I get a little commission for bulbs (or anything else you purchase) when you click this link. It helps me pay the bills for my web server :-)
GE EnergySmart Bulbs from Amazon.com
(more…)

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)

(more…)