Lighting - One of the Most Efficient Energy Savers
There have been numerous studies about lighting and its efficiency. Approximately 11% of a home's energy use comes from lighting. That is a large percentage. With the rapid development of technolgoy, mistakes and incentives. Ligting has gone from the incandescent light bulb to the Government pushed and failed mercury using compact fluorescent to the very efficient Light Emitting Diode or LED.
With 11% of my household energy use going to lighting, I thought that I would turn my house into a real life experiment. I began to swap incandescent light bulbs with LEDs, when the price of the bulbs dropped to about $5 per bulb. I created a table of wattage consumed using both types of bulbs. I have also calculated the energy savings and have graphed my electircal bill results, while annotating the months that the LEDs replaced the incandescent light bulbs. The results surprised me. In my first wave of reducing lighting energy usage, I replaced 100 watt bulbs in the late 1990s with 60 watt bulbs. Beginning in August 2014, I began the next downsizing in wattage by moving from the 60 watt incandescent bulb to a 60-watt equivalent LED bulb. That bulb varied in watts used from 9.5 watts to 12 watts, or reducing watts consumed by 76% to 80%, as LEDs were subsidezed by our local energy company. This was a huge bang for the buck. So, how did this theoretical energy savings stack up to the actual energy savings as reported by the local power company? See for yourself. The August 2014 to September 2014, saw a massive drop in electrical consumption. Comparing like months, August 2014 with August 2015, there was an 18% drop in electricity.
In September 2015, we achieved the goal of falling below our energy efficient neighbors. Part of this was due to continued roll out of LED light bulbs from the most trafficked areas to the lesser trafficked areas. I also found a large drop in electricity consumed when I replaced the outdoor carriage lanterns with those tear drop incandescent bulbs. I found some sales for tear drop LED bulbs and as I mentioned, what a difference. I have not been so quick to replace the indoor ones as the LED tear drop bulbs are big and ugly (they are fine for the exterior carriage lanterns as the glass is frosted and no one can see the ugly LEDs.
I have updated the chart of our household electricity consumption. It continued to fall as we completed our LED installation, adding smart plugs to our phantom energy consumers and a new energy efficient refrigerator. The monthly costs dropped dramatically.
