Re: Incandescent Lightbulb "ban" 2014
The actual cost savings of switching bulb types in a residential home is nowhere near as pronounced as you may think, especially in rooms where the lights are not used often, such as a closet or attic.
A traditional 60 watt light bulb can be had for under 50 cents, and would have an average usable life of 1000 hours. A 14 watt CFL, which produces roughly the same output of the 60 watt light can be found now for about $1.50 for the very cheap ones, roughly 3x the price for a bulb. The rated hours of a CFL is usually around 10,000 hours of operation. The problem with the cheap ones is that they take time to 'warm up' to get to a usable brightness, and that 10,000 hour figure doesn't seem accurate, based on the number of them that I've had go bad.
Anyway, let's look at the cost of operation in a low use situation, such as a light in your attic. I personally don't spend a ton of time in my attic. Maybe once or twice a month I'll have to crawl up there for something. If I'm up there, maybe it's for 10 minutes to adjust the antenna, or to store some christmas decorations, etc. So, 10 minutes, twice a month comes to that light being on for about 4 hours per year total. Based on the life expectancy of an incandescent, that bulb could still be functional for up to 250 years. Yes, it's going to be less because the burn time of 1000 hours gets shortened every time you turn the light on and off, but the same thing happens (and worse) with CFL's. And powering up CFLs in the winter is much harder on them, and they take forever to get to full brightness. So let's take the life of the bulb out of the equation and look at the actual energy costs to operate each bulb.
For cost comparison, the average price of electricity is somewhere around 15 cents per kWh.
4 hours per year at 60 watts for the incandescent = .24 kWh per year, or about 3.6 cents per year to operate.
4 hours per year at 14 watts for the CFL = .06 kWh, or about .9 cent per year to operate.
Yes, it's a significant savings of 2.7 cents per year. However, remember that the CFL cost $1.00 more than the incandescent, so that means it would take 37 years to pay off the difference in switching the bulb. In order for the bulb to pay for itself in a more realistic lifespan, it would have to be used for 30 hours per year at minimum.
Now, let's consider other factors. I'm guessing an incandescent bulb is more likely to be able to sit for 37 years and be functional, vs a CFL, due to the more complex electronics inside of the CFL. Let's also consider the more toxic materials that are inside a CFL, such as mercury, that should be disposed of properly at the end of their life. Let's also consider that there are NO CFL manufacturers in the United states, due to environmental regulations that prohibit it. So now, in order to enforce this, ALL bulb manufacturing is moved overseas. I did find one manufacturer that claims to 'assemble' the lights in the US, but the raw manufacturing is still done overseas. The cost of those lamps was a whopping $6.50 each.
Installing motion detectors in the rooms is another thing that may not be economical. A motion detector usually costs $15-$20. The motion detector, in standby mode, waiting for motion uses about 1 watt of power. When activated, and the light is on, it adds about 5 watts of power to the use of the bulb. Also, the trickle power usage that the motion detector uses can cause havoc on the ballast of the CFL. So let's do some math. A normal CFL on for 4 hours per day at 14 watts uses 20.44 kWh per year, or about $3.06 If using the motion sensor drops that usage to 2 hours per day, that's 2 hours at 19 watts, and 22 hours at 1 watt, or 21.9 kWh for about $3.28 per year. Yes, installing that motion detector to have the light on for 2 hours less per day costs MORE in electricity to operate!!! Obviously with larger bulbs and different duty cycles, the numbers change, but in reality, motion sensors aren't going to create the savings you might think.
Now, what is nice with more efficient lighting is that leaving it on is less of a cost to worry about. In the entry way of my house, I installed a 6 watt LED light. This gets me roughly the same light as a 60 watt bulb did. The operational cost for me to have that bulb on 24 hours per day, 7 days a week is under $7. If I forget to turn it off for one full day, the cost to operate is about 2 cents. Certainly not something to lose any sleep over. In fact, with ALL of the primary lights on in my house ALL day long, the operational cost is still less than $1 per day.
Yes, I installed LED lighting in many places simply for the fact that now I can leave lights on whenever I want and not really care about it. The cost savings of buying LEDs to replace the traditional bulbs didn't justify the purchase, especially if I only used what I needed. However, the longer life of LEDs (so far which has been better than any CFLs) and the pleasing color options that are available were the deciding factors. Plus, now I can be lazy and leave all the lights on in the house all the time and not care.
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