So, a friend sent me this article about the possible banning of the traditional incandescent light bulb by 2012 in California.  My first thought was that it would be nearly impossible to do that.  Except that I thought to think about my own house and every light in our house is already either fluorescent or LED that isn't on a dimmer switch.

And it's not because of wanting to save the environment and such.  That's a nice side effect, of course, but the most immediate need was to save a few greenbacks (or whatever color they are these days).  Out here in California, PG&E has relatively high electricity rates, especially for those who actually use any power.  Here is a snippet from a recent bill that shows the rate scale (hopefully it's OK to share this):

As you can see, any additional usage is at least at a rate of over 32 cents per KWh.  We recently had some recessed lighting installed in our house.  With the flick of a switch, 6 lights come on that aren't on a dimmer.  If these 6 lights had been 60 watt bulbs and they were only on a third of the time (8 hours a day, shorter than a typical working day) they would have cost us $28 a month. However, PG&E also does rebates on screw-in type fluorescent light bulbs.  We found some large packs at Costco that were a great price.  So, we used six 7 watt light bulbs instead that easily produce the same amount of light.  These would only cost us about $3.25 a month if we ran them 8 hours a day.  That's a monthly savings of $25 for just one room installation.  There are plenty of other examples of this in our house.  The savings are, of course, even more if you're replacing 100 watt bulbs with the 12 watt fluorescent variety (88% reduction in wattage).

So, I got to thinking... perhaps they won't have to ban incandescent lights here in California.  Just to save a few bucks, everyone will be going with fluorescent.  Not only that, but they last longer.  Some of our screw in fluorescent lights have been around for years now without any trouble.

Recently I also got a couple of screw-in LED bulbs.  These only use 1.2 watts each (or in the 6 light, 8 hour a day example above, that's just over 50 cents a month to run).  However, they have a blue cast to them when used around regular lights and even the new fluorescent lights.  They also are bit more directional than I would like and not quite as bright as a standard 60 watt bulb.  However, at this sort of power use, I'll find places to put them since they almost don't even show up on the bill.

Do you still use incandescent light bulbs? Why? Have you switched to any other kind of light?  Why?

Posted by Shane on February 1, 2007 8:21 AM | Permalink