Shedding some light on your bulbs

After talking about the best way to save energy in your home or business, its time to talk about the most practical, and probably cheapest, way to lower your bills.

>Jason: Although it isn't the highest user in your home, lighting comprises on average 15% of the total energy usage in your home. Newer homes are usually more efficient, because they are often built with fluorescent lighting in kitchens and garages, compact fluorescent lamps in porch lights and can lights, and the newest homes are often being built with automatic light switches. Older homes, however, are almost always lit with standard incandescent lights. (the light that Thomas Edison invented) Strangely enough, we don't stop to realize that we use a 100+ year old invention every day that hasn't been improved at all. Of course there is a more efficient way to light your home.

If you are like most people, your impression of fluorescent lights is that they are greenish, and give people headaches. This has changed tremendously in the last ten years. Fluorescent lights now compete with incandescent lights in all aspects, except that they are four times more efficient. Lighting is measured in two basic figures, color temperature and color rendition. Temperature is measured in Kelvin, which means the color of an object if it was burning at that degree Kelvin. Rendition is the accuracy of the colors. Incandescent lights reproduce almost every color perfectly, giving it a color rendition index (CRI) of 100. compact fluorescent lights, or CFLs, are anywhere from 75 - 92 CRI. 75 is a little bit unrealistic, and will make objects appear cold, but 90+CRI is very good. Ken, tell me a little bit about CFLs.

>Ken: CFL's, or compact fluorescent lights, are a great way to improve your lighting, lower your bills and actually lower the heat generation in your house all at the same time. If you like to use 100 watt light bulbs in your home, you can get the same amount of light and even the same yellow appearance of that 100 watt light bulb with a 23 watt CFL. What is nice is that you have options with the color of the bulbs with CFLs. If you want a whiter light for reading, or detail work, there is a CFL for that, or you can get a warmer light for "atmosphere". The color of the light is measured in degrees of Kelvin. A 2700K light will be similar to your average incandescent light bulb, a 5100K light will look more like a very white or almost blue light.

>Jason: CFLs are very popular right now because they are so efficient, and the prices have dropped a lot. Check your local utility company for incentives on replacing your incandescent lights with CFLs, they may even put them in for free! If you do this change, you can reasonably expect your electric bill to decrease by 11%. Thats figuring 75% reduction of your lighting costs, which are 15%of your total bill. Thats a good number. In the future we may talk about even more efficient options, like LED, but for now, get your lights replaced and be Energy Smart!