Cut your electrical use for lights by over 80%

Everyone's always looking for a way to save money on their bills....

Here's a quick and easy project you can do to save a surprising amount of electricity... (using our bathroom as an example)

In our bathroom, the main light is just a normal screw in base, such as this;



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I like a lot of light, and if I didn't care about my electric bill, I would have a 100watt bulb in it... because I like lots of light when I need it.

Now, except for when it gets forgotten on, assume a bathroom light generally only gets used an average of two hours every day per person. If it was 100 watt bulb, for a two person home, you would be looking at approximately 12000 watts per month, or 144 kilowatts (Kw), per year. That's around $21.60 a year.

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So, get rid of the old bulb, and put one of these in it's place;


Lampholder Socket Adapter, 2 Outlet - $3.00 - $5.00

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Plug a small set of LED white (or colored if you prefer) into it; like these;


35 bulb LED string, 2 watts total, $10.00 to $15.00

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screw one of these into the light socket;


24 watt CF Bulb, $5.00 - $15.00

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Normally, you keep the CF bulb turned off. When you flip the switch, the LED lights will come on. If you need lots of light for something, you pull the cord and turn the CF on, when you're done, you pull the string to turn off the CF and then flip the switch on the way out the door.

In most cases, when you go into a room, you don't need a lot of light, just enough to get around comfortably. That's what the LED's do for you. They add enough light for you to see, and at only 2 watts.

For times when you need lots of light, the 24 watt CF provides that, which as an added bonus will last 4 times as long.

The difference?

Assuming that 75% of the time, you only use the LED's, you would be looking at 10800 watts (10.8Kw) or $1.62

If you already are using CF lights, you may wonder if it matters much if you add in the LED's... Just using the 24 watt CF for that time would use 34560 watts (34.56Kw) or $5.18


To sum it up...

100watt incandescent bulb $21.60 (100%)
24watt compact flouresent $ 5.18 (24%)
LED/CF Combo $ 1.62 (7.5%)

Imagine if you did it with all the lights in your house/apartment...

 

What is the initial cost of this?
b.t.w. your pics didn't take.

 

Whatever problem you are having with pics, it must be your problem, because they show up fine.

And perhaps you may want to read the post again...

 

Sorry, my mind went to a dc circuit. I've been considering a solar system and I guess my cup runneth over onto your post.

 

Well, if you are building from scratch then using dc isn't a big deal.

However, if you are just adding in a solar system to your existing house, you want to stay with AC (unless you have lots of money to burn).

This idea is perfect as a first step to any conversion to your own power. One of the biggest hurdles people have in setting up a system is understanding that you need to cut your consumption drastically before you try to make your power. Otherwise you are just wasting more money.

I've seen people spend more on PV panels and batteries for their 'typical home' then I would need to set up a whole new system here, pay off the mortgage, buy a used car plus a tractor... lol

 

I also couldn't get the pictures to take BUT I would like to thank you for sharing this very useful information.

 

You both should send a message to Skip then, because the pictures are called from my album... ohhhhhh... I betcha I know why...

try again in a few minutes

 

yeah, let me know if you can see them now...

 

Theres a lesson... you can't link pictures from a hipforums album if its marked private...

 

yes it worked Thank you! you're awsome

 

You could also do the same thing with table lamps... better still, you could have the string of lights strung out or arranged in a pattern on a wall...

Turn the lamp on, the string of lights on the wall lights up and gives the room some diffused light, pull the cord and you have the 'lamp light'...

 

in my way back machine, I used to take string lights and stuff em in glass jars, before LED this wasnt the best idea cause they could get a little hot, I still did it..

 

You could quite likely get away with making 'beer bottle lights' using LED's.

Just take one of the strings of lights and chop it up, hook three or four (or more) close together with a gap of a foot or two, and hook another three or four up, continue for as many bottles as you want, then drop each cluster into an empty beer bottle.... make great accent lighting in a pub atmosphere...

 

We had to go to town today and were beside Rona Cashway, so I ran in and grabbed one of the lampholder socket adapters. It came to $6.76 with taxes. Nicole is going to check around other places this week and see if they are cheaper somewhere else as well as what we can find for the LED strings.

Using the adapter and a 4 watts set of colored LED lights we had here, I set up our bathroom. The CF is only a 13 watt one, which is our standard one here.

This was the result;
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This is with both lights off. The light from the hall outside sorta makes a shine off one of the LED bulbs near the center of the left side.


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Flip on the light switch, and you get this;



It doesn't look quite right in this because of the crappy camera... but you can see the lights lit up.

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Pull the cord on the adapter (you can't see it in the pictures), and the CF comes on and you have this;



Another post coming with more pics...

 

These pics are of the top of the toilet tank and the wall behind it.

I had to juggle the balance on the one pic to get it to look somewhere right,
but once again, its a crappy camera and doesn't like low light at all....

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Both lights off... imagine that... it's dark... lol

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This is the one I played with a bit... it still isn't really accurate, but it is close...
should be a lit brighter, but they may just be the graininess of it.

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With both turned on. The wavy shadows on the back wall are from the
string of LED lights.

While not very bright in the room, that could be solved using a actual
white set rather then colored. You can easily read with just the LED lights while sitting on the toilet.

Electricity...
based on 2 people, at 2 hours per day for 30 days and 365 days, and $0.15/kWh

100W incandescent.......................... 12KWh or $1.80/month, 146KWh or $21.90/year
23W CFL............................................ 2.76KWh or $0.42/month, 33.58KWh or $5.04/year
4W LED/13W CFL Combo (75/25) .... 0.75KWh or $0.11/month, 14.24KWh or $1.37/year

 

I've turned it into an Instructable..

Cut your electrical use for lighting by over 80%