How Much Money Will a CFL Light Bulb Save Me
A single CFL light bulb
will save you $28.23 every year! That’s right just changing 1 incandescent light bulb to a compact fluorescent light bulb will save you $28.23 every year! How energy efficient is that?
By switching or replacing all of your lights in your home to CFL light bulbs will greatly reduce the amount of electricity usage in your home! Some of you may think these CFL light bulbs are expensive, they are not! I will do a break down of the cost to purchase CFL light bulbs and also the cost to run these CFL light bulbs in your home so you can see a comparison between CFL light bulbs and your regular incandescent light bulbs. Scrool down to the chart comparing CFL vs. incandescent bulb.
What is a CFL Light Bulb
The term CFL stands for Compact Fluorescent Light. I’m sure you’ve seen fluorescent lights before, they are long tubes. Well these CFL bulbs are very similar, but they are a smaller diameter tube that is spiraled to take up less room, but still give off enough light, and save electricity.
How Much do CFL Light Bulbs Cost
Compact fluorescent light bulbs costs anywhere from $1 – $3 each, depending on where you buy them and what brand you buy. On average you will find them for about $1.50 in most stores. Remember to buy CFLs in packages and online, they are usually cheaper this way. Buying CFL light bulbs individually may get a little expensive, but will still pay for itself!
How Much Electricity Do CFL Bulbs Use
Your average CFL light bulbs will consume 13 watts of power and still give off the same amount of light as a standard incandescent light bulb that consumes 60 watts! This means that your regular incandescent light bulb will use 4.6 times the amount of electricity than a CFL bulb, which means the CFL will save you 4.6 times the amount of money to use it! These CFL bulbs are very energy efficient!
Why are CFL Bulbs more Efficient than Incandescent Bulbs
CFL bulbs use a different technology to produce visible light. Your average incandescent light uses a small wire,known as a filament, to cross the negative – and positive + electrodes which cause the filament to heat up, so hot that the metal turns a bright white. Which also produces a large amount of heat! So in the summer you run your air conditioner to cool your home, yet your incandescent lights are heating your home causing the air conditioner to run longer and harder, which uses more electricity.
CFL bulbs use a different technology to produce light. CFL bulbs use a ballast to make electrical current flow through mercury vapour gases in the glass tubes. When electric current flows through the mercury vapour it causes the gases to produce pour ultraviolet light, or UV light, which is invisible to the human eye. The glass tubes have a phosphor coating on the inside, which the ultraviolet light emitted by the mercury vapour gases cause the phosphor coating to emit visible light. This method uses a lot less electricity to produce the light and also does not create a lot of heat!
How Does a CFL Bulb Compare to an Incandescent Bulb
I will give you a break down of the initial cost to buy these light bulbs and how much it cost to run the light bulbs. I will give you actual numbers of measurements and prices of these bulbs so you can see how much money you will save using CFL light bulbs vs. incandescent light bulbs!
|
13w CFL bulb |
60w Incandescent Bulb |
| Cost to Purchase 1 |
$1.50 |
$0.50 |
| Buy in Next 5 Yrs |
1 |
10 |
| Total Purchase Cost |
$1.50 |
$5.00 |
| Electricity Cost |
$38.064 |
$175.68 |
| Total Cost over 5YR |
$39.564 |
$180.68 |
Now let me break down this chart for you, CFL bulbs will last for at least 5 years! Most CFL bulbs are rated 5 – 7.5 years! So in the next 5 years you will only need to buy 1 CFL bulb, where an incandescent light bulb will last around 6 months so in the next 5 years you will have to purchase 10 of them to last as long as the CFL bulb!
The cost of electricity to run them is based on the light being on for 16 hours a day, every day for 5 years and $0.10/kWh which is average, but you can look on your electric bill and see what you are paying. Most likely this would be a kitchen, living room, or dining room light. Which actually most of you probably have a ceiling light that holds 3 – 5 lights in it not just 1!
As you can see with this chart that the CFL bulb is way cheaper in initial cost and in electricity usage! Remember this is only 1 light bulb running in your home that will save you $141.12 in 5 years, that’s $28.23 every year in savings! Now think how many lights are turned on in your home right now!
December 15th, 2009 at 8:23 PM
This article gives the math facts that I want for my students. Well-explained!
December 25th, 2009 at 6:25 AM
I want to quote your post in my blog. It can?
And you et an account on Twitter?
December 28th, 2009 at 10:38 PM
Yes you can quote my posts on your blog as long as you provide a link back to my site. Thanks.
October 17th, 2010 at 7:07 AM
thxx 4 giving this article it helped me in my project:D
October 17th, 2010 at 7:16 AM
how it works dat it can give enough light but other bulbs ar not like dat how? but the main Q is dis what is special features in this bulb which other bulb dosent have?
October 17th, 2010 at 1:55 PM
If you read through the CFL bulb information above you will know what the difference is. What is special about CFL is that CFL bulbs are filled with gasses which burn, where regular bulbs short out a thin piece of metal heat it up so much where it glows white.
November 16th, 2010 at 9:51 AM
How would I calculate the return on investment on the example above ?
Cheers
December 5th, 2010 at 3:33 AM
I think I already have an example on this page above that you can go off of. But if you like, let me know amount of bulbs you plan to replace and average usage and I can give you the information. Thanks.
February 11th, 2011 at 9:53 PM
Why save energy if I pay for it! The car dealer’s lot on the highway burns more energy in one night than My house burns in a month and resid. use subsidizes him.
THIS IS NOT GREEN. It’s to sell high priced light bulbs
The ignorant like being deceived.
February 12th, 2011 at 6:30 PM
If you save energy you will pay less. If you want to pay to use more energy then that’s fine, but us average income people need to save money. If you look at the math above you will see these light bulbs are not high priced, they actually are cheaper. You replace them less often and they use less electric which makes your monthly electric bill lower, so you actually are saving money on buying less bulbs and less electric.
February 14th, 2011 at 2:53 PM
You smugly pre-suppose I am one of the bad high income people to create a us good guys against the bad guy projection. I am not! The truth is I was the director of a City and County Building Inspection dept. and served on many code committees, to include one of the longest serving writers of the International Building Code. All of your arguement is based on a static population and light bulb companies and electricity providers will not allow population control(thats real green). Cfl (mercurydisposal is or will be secondary tax incometo greedy local gov’ts. CFL “Snake Oil” for the 21 Century!
October 13th, 2011 at 9:50 PM
can you leave a citation for this source? i have tried to find a way too for a research paper but no author or publishing is given
October 16th, 2011 at 11:12 AM
Garth,
Author is Brandon Jacob Stimmel.
August 31st, 2014 at 12:34 PM
Here’s the kicker. The Great Light Bulb Controversy/Phase Out has nothing to with being green and is based on primarily on BS.
Light bulbs were/are being phased out for one reason only, profit. The majors (GE,Phillips) fully admitted it was about money.
September 8th, 2014 at 11:42 PM
Art,
That very well maybe correct, but I show the math above, CFL bulbs still save you money using CFL instead of incandescent lights. Saves you in cost of replacement bulbs and in electric bill.