A bright way to cut your power bill

I regularly mention using compact fluorescent lights for the home, but I haven't laid out the entire case for CFLs in one place before. It's time to change that.

Below are five huge reasons why you should switch your home light bulbs to CFLs today. (Even if you already use CFLs, you may want to read this list. There's something on it for you, too.)

For this exercise, I'm going to refer to a six-pack of General Electric 26-watt CFLs, which you can get from Walmart.com for $15.16, giving them a cost of $2.53 a bulb. These bulbs claim 100-watt equivalence, but I actually find their brightness to be between that of a 75-watt and a 100-watt incandescent bulb, so we'll compare them to 75-watt bulbs. For comparison's sake, a four-pack of GE's 75-watt incandescents at Amazon.com is $4.10, or $1.03 a bulb.

1. The bulbs themselves are cheaper. If you compare the life spans of the bulbs listed on the packages, the incandescent bulb works for 750 hours, while the CFL has a rated life of 8,000 hours. Just using that number, that means that the cost of regular incandescents over 8,000 hours is $10.99, while the single CFL over 8,000 hours costs only $2.53 for the bulb -- a total savings of $8.46. Even if you don't believe that the life span is really that long, even half that long for the CFL, the long-term cost is still cheaper for the CFL. From my experience, I have yet to have a single CFL burn out after more than a year of using GE CFLs.

2. The per-hour cost of energy for CFLs is cheaper. The CFL uses 26 watts; the incandescent bulb uses 75 watts. That's a difference of 49 watts per hour of usage in favor of the CFL. Let's say you use a bulb for four hours a day and your energy cost is 10 cents per kilowatt-hour. With those rates, one 26-watt CFL in a socket instead of a 75-watt incandescent bulb saves you $7.15 over 12 months. Let's say there are 20 bulbs in your home. That's nearly $150 a year.

More from MSN Money and The Simple Dollar

• How to 'go green' on a budget
• The best of The Simple Dollar
• Walk the talk for a fragile planet
• Other ways to save on energy
• The war for your electric bill
• 10 ways to save money in your bathroom

3. The time involved is less. Let's say it takes two minutes to change a light bulb, including the time involved buying it, fishing it out of storage, unscrewing the old one, screwing in the new one and disposing of the old one. Let's also assume 8,000 hours of usage, which at a rate of four hours a day is 2,000 days of usage, or about five and a half years. Over that time, you'll invest two minutes in changing CFL bulbs versus 21 minutes changing incandescent bulbs. Multiply that by a theoretical 20 bulbs in your house and you're talking about more than six hours of time lost changing incandescent bulbs. That number seems preposterous, but check the math yourself.

4. They cut carbon emissions. Over 21 hours, a 26-watt CFL bulb reduces your energy consumption by one kilowatt-hour over a 75-watt incandescent bulb. At four hours a day, that happens for each bulb every five and a quarter days. Thus, for 20 bulbs in your home, over the course of a year you'll eliminate nearly a ton of carbon-dioxide emissions (1,877 pounds, to be precise). If you're concerned about disposal of CFL bulbs, most municipal areas have a recycling center that will take CFLs and properly dispose of them -- here's a locator -- so that the gases in them won't wind up in a landfill (and neither will the glass).

5. You can save $1 on a GE CFL during July 2007. If you're still held back by the cost, GE is offering a $1 off coupon for any package of GE Energy Smart CFL bulbs -- even the single-bulb package. This trims the above-described package of a six-pack of 26-watt bulbs down to $14.16, or $2.36 a bulb, which actually makes the calculations above even better for CFLs.

Video on MSN Money

Use your money to go green
Your dollars can help make the world a more sustainable place, says MSN Money's Ann Monroe. Strategies range from investing in environment-friendly funds to buying local food.

There's no excuse not to switch -- or at least try CFLs -- at this point. If you're concerned about lighting, use the coupon to buy a small quantity of CFLs (remember to get one of a higher-equivalent wattage than what you use) and test them out. Even if you don't like them for primary lighting, there are out-of-the-way places in every home where they can be used -- closets and so forth.

CFLs are one of the simplest frugal choices you can make. Give them a shot this month.

This article was written by Trent Hamm, the founder of The Simple Dollar, a blog offering a peek at his recovery from near bankruptcy.

Published July 20, 2007

Rate this Article

Click on one of the stars below to rate this article from 1 (lowest) to 5 (highest). Low

Thank you for rating.

High

• View all top-rated articles
• E-mail us your comments on this article
• Discuss in a message board