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Jun 7, 2009 by Paul White2009 will be the year of green. Obama and the media are starting to push the green agenda ( not a bad thing ), and retailers are starting to see the opportuntiy on the horizon. Retailers like Home Depot and Lowes are now stocking their shelves with the newer energy saving products.
One of the easiest sells to make is when a consumer is better off financially buying your product than they would be if they didn't. The HVAC industry for years has been trying to get consumers to upgrade to newer High SEER models just for the energy savings. The problem is when the energy savings take years to make a difference consumers often don't get very excited.
So I asked myself, do I want to save money on my utility bill? Of course. So I did some research on how much I could save by upgrading a single light bulb in my house. The savings were rediculous.
The Experiment
Since the most common light bulb in our house is a 60 watt bulb, I decided to work the math for that.
The following chart shows the energy consumption of two bulbs
a 60watt Incandescent and a 13watt compact Fluorescent ( equivalent to a 60 watt Incandescent )
The starting mark represents the initial cost of the bulb, then every mark after represents the added cost of energy consumed after running for 8 hours that day.
As you can see after only 23 days the new compact Fluorescent pays for itself. I also did a chart for LED bulbs, but the initial cost is too great where it would take years in energy savings to pay for them.
There is a hidden savings in this as well. Fluorescents only convert a fraction of the energy they consume into heat. while traditional bulbs convert 95% of their energy into heat. This reduction in BTU production is sure to help reduce the amount of energy your air condition needs to keep your house cool. With LEDs there would be an evey larger reduction in BTUs and a small reducing in consumption. But I an think of better things to spend $50 on rather than a single LED bulb. Since doing this and swiching utility companies we have gone from $225 / month electric bills to $90 / month. Keep in mind we went from paying 18 cents / KWH to 13 cents / KWH, and also unplugged the hot tub for good. ( hot tub alone was about $40 / month of our energy costs ).
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