By artarmon42 | 1 Comment
Last updated: Friday, March 9, 2007

About a month-and-a-half ago, I changed pretty much all the lightbulbs in my house to flourscent bulbs. I did it after watching An Inconvenient Truth. If you haven’t seen that movie yet, you should!

I changed because I wanted to do my bit for the future planet (those who know me, know that I’m usually far from the environmentalist camp!). But I also did it in an attempt to lower the cost of my electricity bill (honestly, if the environmentalists would just start selling the “personal benefit” of being green, they’d get alot more converts!).

When I’d dabbled with flourescent bulbs a few years back, I was pretty disappointed:

• They took too long to reach full brightness. So it wasn’t really practical to turn them on and off (I’d been taught since young to only have the lights on when you needed them).
• Even at “full” brightness, they weren’t very bright (certainly less than a 60W incandescent bulb).
• They were very costly to buy (6+ times the cost of a normal bulb, but only had 4 times the expected life)
• I never persevered enough with those old bulbs, to determine if there was any true savings.

Having used them for a little over 7 weeks now, I’m happy to report that the new generation of flourscent bulbs:

• Aren’t that expesive anymore (about 2 times the cost, with 4 times the expected life)
• Reach full bright much more quickly. Depending on the type (e.g. normal or floodlight style), that time will be anywhere from 2 seconds to 15 seconds. But the important point is that within 2-4 seconds, the brightness is at a practical level.

And in my most recent electricity bill, I’ve cut my electricity by ~10% (from $94, to $85 per month). I live in Las Vegas (so your per kW cost may be different). The bulbs cost me ~$150, so I’ll probably break even in a little over a year. Although I have a large-ish house we only turn on the lights in the area(s) that we are in (so the length of time it takes me to break even will probably be longer most people’s).

So, now I feel good for doing a little bit to help the environment. And I feel great for saving abit of money.

Australia will phase out traditional incandescent bulbs by 2010. Only flourescent light bulbs will be sold after that period.

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