Power$martLight Up Your Life

rom 10 to 15 percent, or $90 per year, of the average home’s electricity costs can be controlled with the flip of a switch -- a light switch. You don’t want to live in the dark, so how can you light the house more efficiently?

A good solution: Compact fluorescent bolbs (CFLs) use up to 75 percent less energy and last up to 10 times longer that incandescent bulbs. CFLs have improved tremendously since first introduced. The have become smaller, cheaper, brighter, and offer improved color quality.

Replace all light fixtures and bulbs that operate four or more hours a day with ones that use fluorescent bulbs to save money and energy. Use lumens -- the amount of light produced -- to compare lights. For example, a 23-watt fluorescent bulb produces about the same number of lumens as a 100-watt incandescent. Your investment will generally pay for itself in a couple of years.

Here’s a simple comparison for two types of bulbs giving off the same amount of light and burning for four hours per day for three years (4,380 hours). You’ll go through six incandescent bulbs during this period, while the compact fluorescent will still have another 3.8 years of life left.

Source: U.S. Department of Energy, Energy Information Administration

It’s A Fact

If every household in the U.S. replaced just one bulb or fixture with an Energy Star qualified model, we could save more than 8 billion kWh -- equivalent to removing 1 million cars from the road per year!

Energy Consciousness Tips

	Let “Mother Nature” light your home. Sunlight is brighter than a multitude of light bulbs, and it’s free.
	Don’t like coming home to a dark house? Instead of leaving lights on, put timers on a few of the lights in your home, or install motion detectors on exterior flood lights to improve your home security. After you get inside, the sensor will “remember” to turn the lights off.