so i have begun making the switch to compact fluorescent lightbulbs instead of standard incandescents.
what actually got me started thinking about it was, last time i was in p-town visiting the folks, my grandmother was talking about a proposed city ordinance which would outlaw incandescents on the basis of their inefficiency, and require compact fluorescents. she was emphatically not in favor of this ordinance because she doesn’t like the quality of fluorescent light (and to give her her street cred, the woman actually works in a home lighting store, so she knows whereof she speaks). i was skeptical myself, because — well, fluorescents! flickery! white! bland! blah! ugly skanky light!
but then a bulb burnt out in my bedroom overhead fixture and i was out of 60-watt incandescents, and so it came about that i bought a 4 pack at target — on sale! only $12! (vs. like $3 for the incandescents.) i put two of them in the bedroom fixture, and two in my bathroom fixture (where a bulb there had also burnt out — the compact fluorescents made the fixture exceedingly ugly, as it’s the sort of bathroom fixture that has no shades but relies on you to use the round globe bulbs, but what the hell, it’s only a bathroom). and actually, they kind of won me over. the only noticeable difference really is a slight delay between hitting the switch until they flood the room with light (really, it’s less than a second, but it is very noticeable when you’ve always lived with the instant-on of incandescents). the quality of the light is not really changed at all.
so today, when i was at the homely despot, and i noticed they had a sale on compact fluorescents — these were $7 a 4-pack, for the faux-40 watts (9 watts), and $8 for the faux-60 watts (12 watts), which is a rather steep discount indeed — so i bought a 4-pack of 9-watt bulbs to replace the four bulbs in my kitchen ceiling fan (where i currently had 60s, but found them too bright), and two 2-packs of 9-watt round globe bulbs (which i hadn’t seen before, so i was very pleased i could de-uglify my bathroom fixture — it may be only a bathroom, but damn those bulbs are ugly). so i’ve just replaced the 4 bulbs in the ceiling fan, the three bulbs in the bathroom, and am off to put two bulbs in my office overhead fixture shortly.
i’m not exactly sure how much electricity i use, and i’m definitely not sure what proportion of it is used by the fridge or the television versus the lights, but i’m going to guess that about 100KWh go to lights. with the incandescents, i had a total of 930 watts installed. with all of the compact fluorescents — minus one 3-way bulb that’s in a lamp in my kitchen (which i count at its full wattage of 150 although i hardly ever use that setting); i don’t know if they make three-way compact fluorescents but i didn’t see any at the despot — i’ve reduced that total capacity to 286 watts. assuming that means that i go from using 100KWh/930W to 286W, at 0.1075KWh/W that means my usage will drop to about 30KWh, which corresponds roughly to about a $7 decrease in my electric bill per month. since i paid a total of $35 for these light bulbs, i’ll have made back my investment before the end of the year — after that, it’s just free money! hey, even if it is only $7 i’ll still take that over $0 any day.
and of course, i also have the satisfaction of knowing that Al Gore is very proud of me as well.
