Cut your electrical use for lighting by over 80%

So many people are looking for ways to save energy, both in terms of money and environmental impact.

Here is a quick and cheap way to cut the electricity you use for most of your household lights by over 80%
 

Step 1 Identify locations

Any light in your house that has base on the ceiling like the one pictured, or another edison base (screw in bulbs), can be converted.

Comments

[JeremyA]

Next someone will be complaining about the benefits of frosted glass bulbs over standard christmas lights. :) very nice idea. I often times shower in the dark because I don't really need the light for anything. ( I am also usually waking up and don't want alot of light) This is a great Idea

[Darrone]

Assuming you have a CFL, how many years of savings would it take to make the "upgrade" to LED christmas lighting worth it?  

[ChronicTom]

 Just thought I would add...

If you were going from a 100W incandescent to this set up, buying everything, it would breakdown like this.

13W CFL =  $2.00 to $5.00  (we'll use $3)
4W LED  =   $5.00 to $9.00 (we'll use $7)
Adapter  =  $5.00 to $9.00 (we'll use $7)
total = $17.00

Saved per year over the 100W incandescent = $20.53 per year, so just under 10 months...

[coretj]

 I think it would benefit you greatly to shop around more.

-The market down the street sells the 13W CFL bulbs for $0.25 a piece.

-I've never seen those adapters cost more than $2.00 ( I use them for Halloween/Christmas decorations)

-You can LED lights REALLY cheap during an after Christmas sell

[ChronicTom]

I think it would benefit you to realize that if I put the absolute lowest prices I could find for these things, I would be constantly being told by people that they couldn't find them at those prices...

You saying this, just proves that you can't satisfy everyone.

[ChronicTom]

 That would depend on what you paid for the adapter and the LED lights.

If you are just adding the adapter and LED and keeping whatever CFL you have, figure out what it would cost to run the it for the year, multiply that by .25 and add in the what it would cost to run the LED string for the other 75% of the time.

For us, we went from the 23W CFL to the 4W LED/13W CFL, which saves $3.67 per year. So figure the $6.76 for the adapter and the $8.00 (a guess) we paid for the LED lights at christmas it would be slightly over 4 years.

There is more to consider then just that though.

A CFL has around 10,000 hours of life (by rating), however, if they are cycled on and off within a few minutes , in the case of a 5 minute on/off cycle the lifespan can be reduced by as much as 85%. 

So, any place you set this up, the quick on off cycles are going to be handled by the LED's saving that wear on the CFL., as well as the fact that you will only be using the CFL for 1/4 of the time, means it should last its full rated life, which is spread out over 4 times longer

.