Energy saving light bulbs have been around for years and not only do they reduce your carbon dioxide emissions, they also save you money!  So with the numerous benefits why do people still seem reluctant to buy them for use at home?

Well to help dispel some of the myths and encourage more of you to go out and buy these wonderful devices, we’ve created this guide to energy saving light bulbs.

Types of Energy Saving Bulbs:

Many people’s image of an energy saving light bulb is of the standard Compact Fluorescent (CFL) type shown to the left here.  However, if you are more concerned about the look of your light bulbs than the benefits to the environment and your pocket, there are a wide variety of different shaped bulbs available today, a selection of which are shown below. 

 

 

 

Potential Savings:

The best way to save energy and money with lighting is to switch lights off when they are not in use.  However, if you do need to have the lights on then it’s best to have energy saving lights wherever it is possible.

To achieve similar lighting levels to regular incandescent light bulbs, the following replacement CFLs should be used:

 

 

 

 

With this in mind, let’s examine what these reductions mean in terms of energy and cost savings.  For the calculations here, we’ll assume that the typical household light bulb is of the 60 Watt (W) incandescent variety and that this could be replaced with a 13W CFL bulb.  This would represent a 47W saving for each bulb.

If we assume that the average light bulb is on for 3hrs per day, this would equate to 21hrs per week or 1092hrs per year.  So for a single light bulb, this would mean a saving of 51,342 Watt-Hours per year, or 51 Kilowatt-Hours (kWh).  A ‘Kilowatt-Hour’ is also known as a ‘Unit’ of electricity and is the standard unit used by your electricity provider to measure your consumption and hence charge you.  A typical cost for electricity may be £0.10p per Unit or kWh.

Using this cost of electricity for our example above, we can say that replacing the single 60W incandescent light bulb with a 13W CFL light bulb will give us a saving of just over £5 per year.  Considering that energy saving light bulbs can be picked up in most supermarkets for less than a pound now, you could get your money back in just a month or two depending on how often they are used.

The more important factor to consider here is the saving to the environment.  Taking into account all different forms of electricity generation, we know that for every kWh of electricity used, 0.422kg of Carbon Dioxide (CO₂) are released into the atmosphere during it’s generation.  So for our example here, a single CFL light bulb will stop the emission of over 21kgCO₂ per year.

The above calculations represent some fairly impressive saving the sake of purchasing and installing a new light bulb, but don’t forget, this is for a single light bulb only!  If you then consider that you might replace 5 or 10 light bulbs, the savings could be far more significant:

Replacing 5 no. 60W incandescent light bulbs with 13W CFL light bulbs leads to savings of:

• 256kWh of electricity each year,
• £25 per year,
• 108kg of CO₂ per year.

Replacing 10 no. 60W incandescent light bulbs with 13W CFL light bulbs leads to savings of:

• 513kWh of electricity each year,
• £51 per year,
• 217kg of CO₂ per year.

Another way of looking at this would be to say that if all of the 25million dwellings in the UK replaced just 1 light bulb each, it would stop the emission of over 541,000 Tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere.  This would also remove the need for over 1 Giga-Watt (GW) of electricty production, equivalent to shutting down an entire medium sized coal power station!

These are some incredible savings and something that all of us can achieve simply by changing some light bulbs.  If we all start to make small changes like this then the combined effort will yield some truly staggering results!

Other Benefits:

Compact Fluorescent light bulbs can last up to ten times longer than your standard incandescent light bulb so provide you with even more savings as you replace them less.  A single bulb could save you up to £60 over it’s lifetime or more if you consider rising energy costs.

The technology behind CFL’s is advancing all the time and certain bulbs are now even compatible with dimmer switches.

Other forms of energy saving lighting are now becoming more common including LED lighting and energy saving Halogen bulbs offering even bigger savings but with currently higher initial costs.

 

This all adds up to make energy saving lighting an obvious choice for nearly all applications.  The only reason people still choose non-energy saving lighting is due to a lack of education regarding the benefits of compact fluorescents and other lighting options, so hopefully this little guide will help you to realise why we should all switch today.

Remember, even when you do switch, the best way to save energy is to switch lights off when you leave the room!