Switching to CFL

September 10, 2006

I was at Home Depot today and picked up 4 CFL bulbs as a bit of a test.  4 “60 watt equivalent” cost me $7.97, so about $2 each.   I haven’t bought ‘regular’ bulbs in awhile, but Lesley did pick up a pack some time back.  If I recall, the GE ‘long life’ ones came out to about 70 cents each or something around there, so CFLs are about 3 times as expensive.

CFL – compact fluorescent light – is apparently a relatively new type of bulb which is much more energy efficient.  They are a little funky looking, to be honest.  Think of a long thing fluorescent tube coiled on to itself, with a ‘regular’ bulb socket fitting on the end.  Or just look over here to see what one looks like (look at the top left image).  I quoted ‘60 watt equivalent’ before, because that’s how they’re labelled.  To produce the equivalent of a conventional 60 watt bulb, the CFL uses only 14 watts.   So, something that costs 200% more but uses 75% roughly less energy should pay for itself relatively quickly.  I tried to use one of the online calculators from the EPA to determine the cost savings over time, but couldn’t quite work it out (I dunno was my cost per kwh is, for starters).  I do know that it might only be a break even for me from a cash standpoint, but over time if it helps in some small way to reduce energy consumption, it’s probably a good thing.

This article was the one that brought CFLs to my attention, although having poked around some other sites it seems they’ve been around for a bit longer than I thought (someone on another site mentioned they’d been using them for almost 4 years).  It’s a bit frightening the power WalMart seems to be able to wield, and should give everyone some concern.  It’s also funny to think that they (WalMart) will claim there’s nothing they can do about getting better health coverage for their workers, or complying with environmental regulations, etc., but can reduce green house emissions around the world by stocking and price cutting some light bulbs.  Certainly there’s some degree of PR going on here, but it’s still good to see some positive environmental news once in awhile.

Interesting quote:

What that means is that if every one of 110 million American households bought just one ice-cream-cone bulb, took it home, and screwed it in the place of an ordinary 60-watt bulb, the energy saved would be enough to power a city of 1.5 million people. One bulb swapped out, enough electricity saved to power all the homes in Delaware and Rhode Island. In terms of oil not burned, or greenhouse gases not exhausted into the atmosphere, one bulb is equivalent to taking 1.3 million cars off the roads.

So, it seems there are some easy things everyone can do to help reduce power consumption, besides the obvious ‘don’t use power’ argument.

Posted in Energy, Housing, Ideas, Personal