The following is a guest post from KuleKat.
Let me straightaway apologise for drawing you in with a misleading heading. I'm not talking about green lights as in traffic lights, and nor are you going to get rich by reading this. A little "richer" maybe, but not exactly pre-crash banker, snout in the trough, rich as Croesus, rich.
Let me explain... there are two basic techniques for increasing your disposable income (or getting richer). Plan A is to increase your earnings and Plan B is to decrease your expenditure.
The upside of increasing what comes in is that there is no theoretical limit to how much it might be possible to earn; the downside being that it is hard to do. Whereas decreasing outgoings is something you probably do have some amount of control over, even if there is a pretty obvious limit to how much extra disposable dosh this can liberate.
I therefore put before you, readers of this blog, Exhibit A: the electricity bill. Everyone has one and everybody wishes it would go on a diet. But in fact, cutting this bloated monster down to size is quite simple. It boils down to understanding three things:
- A large part of the average domestic electricity bill is due to electric lighting;
- The cost of electric lighting is effectively the cost of electricity - the running cost;
- Low energy lighting can slice a nifty chunk off this running cost.
Low energy lighting is easy to install, will often pay for itself within a year and will save a great deal of money over time. As I pointed out in an earlier post, avoid CFL light bulbs if possible and consider switching to LED lighting instead.
LED kitchen lighting in place of halogen downlights is a good starting place. For general lighting applications (other than spotlights) then Cree LED globe light bulbs give out as much all round light as a traditional 100w incandescent bulb. The only caveat I would add regarding LED lights is that you very much get what you pay for and to obtain high quality, low energy lighting that will last for a great many years you need to invest in quality, brand named products.
The savings from using LED lighting are not difficult to calculate. As a rough guide LED lights consume 1/10th of the electricity of their incandescent equivalents. So assuming you retrofit LEDs on a like-for-like luminosity basis (i.e. replace a 50w incandescent with a 5w LED) you will cut 90% of the cost of running that light fitting.
Here's some boring math. Assume your electricity spend on lighting averages $1,000 per annum and you replace half your lights with LEDs. Your bill now drops to: $500 + ($500 * 0.10) = $550. Replace the whole lot and that $1,000 suddenly looks more like $100. Not bad huh?
Clearly your own mileage will vary, and I haven't accounted for the write-down of the initial investment (buying the LEDs). Still, as a piece of fun, you could figure out your own potential savings then consider how large a before-tax pay hike you would need to demand (and secure) in order to match this using Plan A.
Personally, for an easier and more assured outcome my money's on Plan B and LED lighting.
KuleKat is interested in the defining features of our times (climate change, oil depletion, technology and so on) and what it all means and more importantly what WE as individuals can do about it.
Photo Source: BabyDinosaur via Creative Commons
13 Responses
1
Yanic A.
April 30th, 2009 at 4:28 pm
Brilliant! (No pun intended)
I adore this post. Witty, informative, innovative and just plain fun!
2
Title Insurance Tampa
May 1st, 2009 at 3:55 am
Means LED can do great savings for us, love your way of Increase of Income and Decrease Expenditure.
3
powerball
May 1st, 2009 at 6:26 am
So really it a best way to increase earnings and P decrease expenditure, thanks for giving awareness - nice post-go green!
4
pays to live green
May 1st, 2009 at 7:36 pm
It's really easy to make small changes like this throughout our homes and really save tons of money and make a difference on the environment. Great post.
5
Olight
May 2nd, 2009 at 2:08 pm
While retrofitting LED lights can be expensive in a home - for new builds it now makes financial sense in many cases.
6
KuleKat
May 3rd, 2009 at 9:19 am
Olight said:
It can seem expensive retrofitting LED lighting because you are in effect throwing away existing systems and the upfront investment ain't cheap, but the return on that investment still makes it worth doing.
For new builds you would have think hard to justify *not* installing LEDs. Also, it's a different way of using lighting. It's quite easy to imbed LEDs in things, so rather than illuminating an item it illuminates itself. Many new builds I've seen use lots of high quality warm white LED downlighter spots combined with colored wall wash effects (which diffuses the light) and feature lighting.
Oh, and thanks for the compliment Yanic, much appreciated (your check (or is that cheque in Canada?) is in the post).
7
Singapore Property
May 3rd, 2009 at 8:49 pm
I seldom use spot lights, as understood that it waste lots of electricity.All of the bulbs in my house are switched to energy saving.Thus, cost savings!
8
wilson
May 5th, 2009 at 12:43 am
In this case, I would take both the Plan A and Plan B, as it's nothing wrong to earn more and spend less in daily life, isn't it?
9
orgnanic vegetable gardening
May 5th, 2009 at 8:05 pm
Make sure you know what LED's you are buying. There are many cheap grade knockoff's coming out of china, that will lose light output quickly.
10
social networking philippines
May 6th, 2009 at 1:42 am
Excellent ideas! I totally believe that if we decrease our expenses, thus we can have lot of savings.
11
prevajanje
May 6th, 2009 at 4:14 am
Great tip, thank you. I'm considering LED's but I've heard somewhere that their production isn't as eco as their use is. Is that true?
12
Internet Marketing Joy
May 7th, 2009 at 12:22 am
For me, using these so called "green lights" or LED lights is a win-win situation between us and mother nature...not only that it can save us a lot of money but also it can save our environment.
13
KuleKat
May 11th, 2009 at 12:56 pm
prevajanje said:
The production of LEDs is as eco-friendly as most other products i.e. not very to an untrained eye. That's just the nature of manufacturing - solar panels use similar exotic materials in their production and commercial wind turbines require huge quantities of concrete, the production of which is thoroughly environmentally unfriendly.
It all comes down to the cost-benefit ratio - does the long term benefit of a wind farm outweigh the upfront environmental cost of constructing it, when compared against alternatives such as continuing to run a coal fired power station? It's not ideal but at the end of the day there is no "perfect" solution and the least bad will have to do.
As regards LED production versus other forms of lighting, it's a hands down win for LED. Without boring you with economics and maths, the clinching fact is their long life - vastly fewer LEDs need to be manufactured. Conventional light bulb production would have to be orders of magnitude environmentally better to offset this, and it is isn't, it's already worse (due mainly to amount of energy required for production and in the case of CFLs the more complex build process and toxic materials).