Lighten Everyone’s Life

An article in this week’s Economist is rather illuminating! Pun intended.

I had a discussion with my neighbour Malcolm recently just after the news broke that the European Commission was going to outlaw incandescent light bulbs in favour of the much more energy efficient compact fluourescent light (CFL). Malcolm told me the things that his friends were saying about the new bulbs: expensive, low quality light, civil liberties and how some of them were hoarding the incandescent bulbs.

In my living room there are six CFL bulbs and one incandescent bulb. The incandescent bulb is in a socket that is attached to a dimmer switch that CFLs can’t cope with!

I was able to demonstrate to Malcolm that six CFLs cost around the same as the ONE incandescent bulb in my living room when operated at full power. I also showed Malcolm the difference in quality of light as between the one incandescent bulb and just two CFL bulbs (my wall lights have two bulbs in each and they cannot be dontrolled independently).

Malcolm was so surprised at what I was able to demonstrate and I can only hope that he shared his new found knowledge with his friends! I will ask him at our weekly coffee and chocolate biscuit session this week!

Well, things are marching on apace in the world of the light bulb apparently:

http://www.economist.com/science/displayStory.cfm?story_id=13315818&source=hptextfeature

Light emitting diodes (LEDs) are moving in the direction of our living rooms. Currently very expensive at around £40 a bulb they are said to have a life of 45,000 hours: as opposed to the average 1,000 hours for an incandescent bulb and 10,000 hours or so for a CFL bulb.

In my living there are six CFLs and one incandescent bulb. I can put them on in various combinations:

incandescent only

two CFLs … plus the incandescent

four CFLs … plus the incandescent

In my case, by cutting out the incandescent bulb and having just two CFLs I save £24.966 a year in electricity costs assuming I have the lights on for 12 hours a day for 365 days a year. Multiply that the number of bulbs and so on throughout your house and you will quickly appreciate the savings you make, the savings in electricity you make and how the Economist article says that by using LEDs in the ways suggested in the article, 130 power stations in the USA alone would no longer be required.

Here are a few more calculations to help you just in case you think that CFLs are ECONOMICALLY a bad idea: the number at the top of each column is the number of bulbs in use

 

Costs and Savings	1	2	3	4	5
Incandescent 100 Watt	32.85	65.7	98.55	131.4	164.25
CFL 12 Watt bulbs	3.942	7.884	11.83	15.77	19.71
Savings	28.908	57.82	86.72	115.63	144.54

DW