One of the easiest and most cost effective ways to reduce your energy bill and go green (and do it Instantly) is hidden in your home's lighting systems. Fact: By simply replacing every bulb in your house with a compact fluorescent one, you can cut your lighting energy usage by a whopping 75% or better, and save serious cash on your electric utility bill. How does this translate into savings on your electric bill? Let's do some math and I'll prove it to you... Quick and dirty, just count every light fixture in your home, including can lights, undercabinet lights, lamps, the garage and exterior sconces or wall packs. ALL the "fixtures", not the "light bulbs". In my Tri-Level, that's 42 fixtures. Now let's assign a value to each- we'll say 50 watts each. Some will be less, some will be more, but for our purposes here that's close enough. So my home has 42 fixtures at 50 watts each for a total of 2,100 watts of lighting. Now, I've calculated our usage patterns in my home, and I've found that on average our lights are burning around 3 hours a day all together, or 21 hours a week. Some lights are on more, of course, like in the kitchen, while others less, such as in the laundry and halls, but taken all together, my number is about 3 hours per day on average across the board, and I think that's probably pretty true for most people too. Now, 2,100 watts at 21 hours equals 44,100 watt hours weekly, and times 30 days equals a whopping 1,323,000 watt hours a month. Divide this number by 1000 and you get 1,323 "kilo-watt hours" a month, which is how your utility company bills for power. Now, my average kWh cost is about 11.5 cents each when you add in all the taxes, customer charges, etc. Your's may be slightly different, and you can easily calculate this by getting out your latest electric bill and divide your total current charges by the total kWh's used- my example was taken from a $256.00 bill divided by 2,229 kWh for the month. Ok, the bottom line: Using standard voltage incandescent lighting in my home was costing me an average of $152.15 a month (1,323 x 11.5c each). By replacing every bulb in my home with a compact fluorescent one, I cut this by an incredible 75%, or about $114.00 a MONTH. Some of my fixtures were already fluorescent or low-voltage already, so I only had to buy 30 bulbs or so, and I found a great source online for them, so my cost was about 3 bucks each, or a measly $90.00. That makes my payback at just over Three WEEKS. Are you starting to see the power here? And I haven't even touched on the fact that these new bulbs are good for 10,000 hours as compared to my old IC bulbs at 2,000 or so! So, yeah- it's really a No-Brainer, isn't it? So why don't more people do it? Well...therein lies the problem- it's with the way we THINK. Most people focus on the "Cost To Buy", meaning the initial cost of the bulb when what they NEED to be focusing on is the "Cost To Own"! That's a very difficult barrier to overcome, but You Must Do It if you are serious about saving money and saving this planet. It's not impossible to learn new ways to do things, and the cash savings are real and quantifiable... But you've got to Start NOW, and Just DO IT. And I'm willing to help! To find out more on how to go green with lighting, and discover my "Secret Source" for cheap fluorescent bulbs, come visit us today, and sign up for our newsletter, Living Green and Living Strong!

live green

alternative energy

The author holds a BSEE, RCDD/lan, IBEW JW Certifications, and is a licensed, bonded, and insured General, Electrical, and Mechanical Contractor as well as an Alternative Energy Expert in Solar and Wind Power Technologies. For more on my passion for Living Green, see http://livegreenlivestrong.com