Power consumption will drop with ban of incandescent bulbs

by William Papolis, Monday Apr 24, 2007 11:09AM EST

The US, Canada, Australia and the European Union have all enacted different initiatives to get rid of incandescent light bulbs in the near future. (see chart) Lighting is a big portion of our annual energy bill. Power for lighting in North America represents 20% or our total annual energy consumption. Switching from incandescent bulbs to compact fluorescent lighting (or CFL) can reduce that consumption to just 5% of our total annual energy consumption, experts predict. The first step is to ban incandescent light bulbs. What does that mean for us? Lighting will be a whole lot cheaper! Here are a comparison between CFL and incandescent bulbs:

A typical CFL will cost about $40 ($5 for the bulb and $35 to use it for it's lifetime). A typical incandescent bulbs costs about $16 ($1 for the bulb and $15 to use it). Here is the big difference .. "you will need about 10 incandescent bulbs to match the life of a typical CFL." (Price for that cheap incandescent sky rockets to = $160 or 4 times the price of the CFL).

Why the big difference in price? For incandescent bulbs, 95% of the energy consumed is emitted as heat.

So if you haven't done it yet, take action. Switch those bulbs and start saving now. Don't forget, for dimmer switches, use the special "Dimmer rated CFL's" or they will burn out the first time you use them.

	When are incandescents bulbs banned?
	Region	Ban incandescent
	US	Jan 1, 2012
	Ontario, Canada	Jan 1, 2012
	Australia	Jan 1, 2010
	EU	Jan 1, 2010

Some more tips on using CFL's here.

Read more here and here.

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