[alterego]

we use on average 590 Kilo Watt hours per month,

Our average electric bill is between 70 and 150 dollars depending on the month of the year.

We have gas stove, gas water heater, electric dryer, well pump, big ass flat TV, and all the typical electronics.

We have 8 light bulbs in basement they are old style 100 watt incandescent

Wanting to replace with 12 watt 60 equivalent LED bulbs I just checked today they are 26 dollars each.

Upstairs we have 13 little 25 watt incandescent bulbs in bathroom vanities, you can buy 2 watt to 25 watt LED they are 7.89 each

Upstairs we have 12 60 watt incandescent bulbs, I found that 12 watt LED bulbs will make 60 watts once again they 26 dollars each

8 of the bulbs have already been replaced with compact florescent bulbs, these are 13 watt bulbs, LED are 12 watt it does not make sense to replace them.

So to replace
8 at 26 equals $208
13 at 7.89 equals $102.57
12 at 26 equals $312
Sub Totals --- $622.57
Sales tax 37.36
Total equals --$659.93

If 25 % of the electric bill is for lights and the average monthly bill is $110 per month *.25 equals 27.5 dollars per month for lights.

The small bulbs are 2 watt to 25 watt so they use 8% of the power of the incandescent
The large bulbs are 12 w to 60 so they are 20 % of the power on the incandescent

Average would be 14% of previous consumption so my multiplier is .86 of $27.5 per month so $23.65 potential monthly savings,

$659.93 divided by $23.65 equals 27.90 months for cost return,

IS IT WORTH IT????

 

[Ripon]

I would say yes, but I would shop around on bulb, wait for deals, and do them over a year at $50 a month or so.

You seem engaged in the math so now add up how often those lights are on. Watt x hrs a day = kilowatt hrs a month and you can see if your 25% projection is off or right...at least be closer.

Also what are your utility rates? Here in beloved CA most of us get (x) kilowatt hours at a very affordable rate. Cross over tier one and the rate goes up a tad, but cross into tier three and WALLOP you get a doubled rate. Now for those of us in tier plans if a few bulbs knocked us down to tier 2 again it could save us .30/33 cents a kilowatt hour.

If a 100 watt bulb is on 3 hrs a day for 30 days it's 9 klwhrs or could be $2.70 a month, but an LED at 15 watts is 1.35 ish klwhrs at $.2 due to a lower tier and you save $30 a year on one bulb.

 

[alterego]

A little looking on the internet for the most energy efficient bulb shows that the Phillips L is the most efficient but they are 50 dollars per bulb to get down to 9.5 watt usage Phillips. From the Silvania as advertised 12.5 watt, that I found for $26 dollars per bulb at Menards, almost twice as much for a 2.5 watt efficiency gain.

Last month was 791 KWH total electric bill was 116.47 $121.13 with tax. So .15313 per KWH.

I am unsure of how much is spent on lighting.

I am mostly interested in getting down to a point where I can run the house on solar power, that is the entire point in this exercise.

 

[GTGallop]

I say YES because if you ever run a generator or car-battery and an inverter, then you basically get light for FREE with out a huge draw. So in the future if you have a choice between lights or a fridge, then you can have both.

 

[Prepadoodle]

LED bulbs last 20-25 years or more. What will electricity cost 20 years from now? That $100 electric bill might be $300 or $400 or even more.

Don't forget regular incandescent bulbs don't last that long. How many replacement bulbs will you buy in the next 20 years? How much will they cost?

Yeah, it's usually worth doing.

Buy them online and at least save the sales tax.

 

[Prepadoodle]

10W LED Bulb, Equal to Brightness of 60W Incandescent Bulb $10.88 www.lightingever.com

 

[Montana Rancher]

My feedback is the "high efficiencty" florescent bulbs don't have a very long life expectancy!

Yes if you put that 100w bulb in using 12watts a hour and turn it on and off it fails within a year, no shinola they are really bad for lasting the thousands of hours they are rated for.

IMO stay with the regular bulbs, if you turn them on and off they last longer and will use less power compared to their cost.

Plus if you read the blogs the old bulbs are a lot more earth friendly since they have no mercury in them.

P.S. I prefer the 32 watt florescent tube fixtures (which are either 2 or 4 tubes per fixture) They are cheaper to replace, last for thousands of hours and don't have the problems the modern day floresents have.

 

[alterego]

I have performed a mental assessment of the lights that are used the most in consideration to those that are old style incandescent.

I will buy a small group of bulbs right now, three for the light over the kitchen table, this one gets used most, and then replace as I go.

My main thing is consumption, I really need to harp on my wife about unnecessary consumption.

We have a ceiling fan in each main room one in each bedroom, she will leave these on 24 7 365 if I do not argue with her regularly.

The weather has cooled considerable this week so the air conditioner is off. It is not winter so the cow tank water heater is not running.

Do any of you guys have a solar setup, where you can tell me how many panels you have, and how many watts each they are, and how much it all costs, there are a few other posts on here and I will troll those as well.

 

[HuntingHawk]

Self contained flouresent from Dollar General or anyother dollar store. Its the route I went to about 10 years ago. They cost alittle more then condesent but last longer & use less power.

I have a small solar system that powers my storm shelter. It is four 80watt & two 90watt panels. A 30amp controller. Three 125AH deep cycle batteries. A few things in the storm shelter are 12VDC like lights & fans. 2,000watt inverter to power 120VAC items. During outages I use a gas generator to run the well pump but that is only for a few minutes (about 15-20 each morning) so don't use a lot of fuel for it. My system will run the 10,000BTU air conditioner but its a hard drain on it. About $1,600 invested into the solar system.

 

[PalmettoTree]

27 months is a little long. Most companies want something less than 18 to 24 months. I'd say overall yes it was worth it.

In 2009 I went through and upgraded our heat and AC changed the lights and hot water heaters at each end of the house. I tracked the bills and the payback was just over a year.

 

[hayden]

Just that you have become aware of all the lights and fans and how much power they use is a step forward. I never paid that much attention to all that until I got my first solar panels. I used to leave my desktop pc on 24/7 and some days never used it at all. With it's 250 watt power supply that is a kilowatt hour every 4 hours/ 6 kwh every day/ 180 kwh per month. I only turn that pc on now if I need to print something. My laptop uses much less power and I don't leave it plugged in all the time. Unplug your cell phone chargers when not in use. I don't know if I'll ever save enough on my electric bill to pay off my solar panels and batteries and grid tie inverters or my inverters for making 120 volts from the batteries but I will have power when all my neighbors have none. After I turned off the pc my monthly usage was about 330 kwh per month. My last bill it was down to 220 kwh. I'm so cheap I leave some of my blinds open to use my neighbors lights to light my path to the bathroom lol.

 

[GTGallop]

I have performed a mental assessment of the lights that are used the most in consideration to those that are old style incandescent.

I will buy a small group of bulbs right now, three for the light over the kitchen table, this one gets used most, and then replace as I go.

My main thing is consumption, I really need to harp on my wife about unnecessary consumption.

We have a ceiling fan in each main room one in each bedroom, she will leave these on 24 7 365 if I do not argue with her regularly.

The weather has cooled considerable this week so the air conditioner is off. It is not winter so the cow tank water heater is not running.

Do any of you guys have a solar setup, where you can tell me how many panels you have, and how many watts each they are, and how much it all costs, there are a few other posts on here and I will troll those as well.

Sounds like you need this or a similar product.
Lutron Maestro 2 Amp Single Pole Occupancy Sensing Switch - White-MS-OPS2H-WH at The Home Depot

Or these
Leviton 500-Watt 60-Minute Timer-R62-6161T-1LW at The Home Depot

I noticed people in my house like to turn on the bathroom fan and leave for work. That means a bath fan runs all day (waste of energy) and because it doesn't have a 24hour duty cycle it is a fire hazard and shaves YEARS off the life of the fan. It also pumps out 180 CFM or my highly cleaned and filtered air-conditioned air and blows it straight out the house. Lets see... If We are gone for 10 hours, that 600 minutes at 180 CFM thats 108,000 cubic feet of air. Or enough to fill a 2,000 square foot home 5 times. Think about how hard the AC has to run to recoup that. And where does the replacement air come from? It comes from outside the envelope, leaking in any nooks, cracks, and crannies in your house. Any part not sealed up is pulling in hot dirty air.

So if you like your lights, but they stay on tooooo much, then maybe the solution is a switch that limits operation to when you are in the room, or for a specific time.

They also make these programmable ones for exterior lights. They have a randomizer feature that turns them on and off at odd intervals so people watching your house don't know what your schedule really is. It's a little bit of counter intelligence.
Honeywell Econo Switch 7 Day Programmable Timer Switch for Lights and Motors-RPLS730B1000/U at The Home Depot

 

[alterego]

Well I have never gotten so excited about light bulbs, we had a heck of a time finding bulbs for the lights in the bathroom ceilings,
We went to
Menards, Walmart, Home Depot, and finally Lowe's is where we found the right type, we bought some US made 3M LED 's at Menards for 18 something each, went to Walmart and they were over 27 each. I am glad the we found the ones at Menards first. Very happy they are made in USA. They are 13.5 watt bulbs that create 60 watt equivalent. Two placed in the ceiling fan in the living room seem bright but it is hard to tell.

We replaced the three bulbs in the light over the kitchen table as well with 2 watt 25 equivalent bulbs, total of 75 watts, equivalent lumens. We were hoping for something like 3.5 or 5 watt LED to produce the same as 100 watts of light (I should be doing my comparison in lumens but I do not know the numbers)

These little thread end bulbs were hard to find any thing over 25 watt equivalent.

So we spent a couple hundred bucks, this leaves 8 bulbs in the basement to be replaced, these get used very little so they will be last, then the flood lights on the eves of the house (8)and over the porch (5) the ones over the porch get used significantly in the winter time.

So for todays changes

4 100watt bulbs changed out for 4 4.8 watt LED bulbs 380.8 watts saved during operation in bathroom ceiling lights

2 60 watt bulbs changed out for 2 13.5 watt LED bulbs 93 watts saved during operation Living room ceiling fan

3 40 watt accent bulbs changed out for 3 2 watt LED bulbs 114 watts saved during operation Kitchen light over table.

640 watts previous to 52.2 watts now is 91.8 % less consumption, that is a big savings in my mind, we gave up on some lumens at the kitchen table though.

 

[StarPD45]

I'm so cheap I leave some of my blinds open to use my neighbors lights to light my path to the bathroom lol.

LOL. And I thought I was cheap. Besides, no neighbors are that close.

I have several of the small LED night lights around the house. They come on at dark and go off in the light.
They aren't enough to ruin your night vision, but let you keep from tripping over things.

 

[alterego]

Light Emitting Diode Disappointment.

Well my wife is a little disappointed in the amount of light we are getting from a few of the lights now that we are on the cheap, especially the lights in the bathroom.

I notice it as well, but damn 12 watts

 

[GTGallop]

Hang in there - That technology is still advancing. Look at what we had for lights 20 years ago. What will we have 20 years from now?

I know a lady that put dimmable LEDs in her kitchen. She took out the 4 can lights (think 1983) and had the holes covered. Then she added back 8 TINY LEDs on gimbals (like an eyeball socket) over a larger area. I don't know what wattage she went with but it is a pretty light and very useful. They dim well too with a pure sinewave dimmer. Since this was a total light fixture change out and part of a remodel I know she spent some bucks to get that but it does look really clean - like 8 diamonds in the ceiling.

 

[alterego]

An unexpected quick pay back by un related energy savings.

I was a little miffed at our electric bill for the month of July this year, our electric bill for July was $121.13

Because of my new found cheap bastard, as my wife described, light bulbs and hate for paying propane and electric bills we went and bought the above in this post described LED lights.

I went on a "turn shit off" tantrum for a month and only ran the necessities, in stead of letting the wife run all the ceiling fans etc 24/7. One thing that played well into this was the weather was consistently cooler causing less need for the air conditioning, which is now back on with the heat.

Our August electric bill came a couple of days ago, and the KW usage was down to 435 from 1102 last month so this bill was 66.93 down from 121.13, I know this is not all from changing out a few bulbs, but damn I feel vindicated.

PS LED bulbs are on sale at Menards this week for 7.99, I highly suggest you go get some, and unplug some stuff.

As many have said on this forum, the best thing you can do is reduce consumption.

 

[Mic]

As many have said on this forum, the best thing you can do is reduce consumption.

I have started doing this with water consumption, but haven't really gone after electricity yet.

As a side note, I've been watching "Extreme Cheapskates" on the DIY channel. I see some of you folks are doing many of the things they do in the show (turning off computer/unplugging chargers/etc). They have gone out of their way to find the folks that are weird as hell, but it's nice to find some ideas from them.

 

[alterego]

I Am Using This Thread As A Memo.
We Have Been Operating Under The Premise That Repulse Replace The Incandecent Bulbs As They Burn Out. But They Are Not Burning Out So We Took Maters In Our Own Hands. MyNineteen Year Old Comes Home Late And The Wife Leaves The Porch Light On For Her. Those Bulbs Were Five Sixty Five Watt Parr Thirty. We Found 11.9 Watt Replacements Today For Seventeen Bucks Each. That's 82 Percent Less Electric.

 

[alterego]

Another wild hair today brought on by a conversation with a solar install professional. I have an appointment Saturday to go discuss a solar system to run our entire house. So I was motivated to replace the eight which turned out to be nine bulbs I still need to buy one. As I miss counted.
Any way eight bulbs out one 40 one 60 and six one hundred incandescent bulbs a total of 700 watts of consumption with six 60 watt equivalent 9 consumption and two 17 consumption 100 equivalent. That's. 12.5 % of what we took out. I waited to replace these until last because they are only on two or three times a day for an average of 5 minites.