SmartEnergyViews

LED Christmas lights save money and energy. We got some. They have strings of 50 at K-Mart on sale for $6.99. They also have them at Home Depot, Lowes and Target.

They look great, and use less than 5 watts per string as compared to about 25 watts for a string of 50 mini lights or 350 watts for a string of 50 traditional C9 lights.

Just got our first full month electric bill since switching out our most frequently used light bulbs with CFLs (6 bulbs).

Along with other conservation measures, it looks like we had about a 15% savings compared to the same period last year, which for us works out to about $26 for a 30 day billing period at the current rates.

So basically, the CFLs have already paid for themselves (which doesn't seem possible, but there you go). Our savings may be higher because we work mostly from home so we are here 7X24 so our lights are on longer. Your mileage may vary.

It should also be noted that the average daily high temperature for June 2007 was about 2 degrees higher (88.5) as compared to June 2006 (86.6), so it's likely we ran the AC a little more this year than last.

We mentioned previously that dimmable CFLs are hard to find. I couldn't find any locally, but a good source on the internet for dimmable CFL bulbs is TopBulb.com.

The bulbs are a little expensive ($24 ea. for the ones we bought), but they work and they will pay for themselves in energy savings over the 10,000 hour rated life of the bulb (if they last that long).

We got 15w (2700K color temp.) replacements (made by Technical Consumer Products, also known as "Springlamp" brand) for two 60w kitchen lights. Actually, we were using 54w long-life bulbs, so the 15w CFLs are a little brighter. They work fine with the dimmer but won't dim as low as incandescent (the CFL dimmable range is 100% to 20%).

We've been looking in to compact fluorescent bulbs (CFLs) to reduce energy consumption for lighting. Here's what we've learned so far.

Read more...