Tired of Giving Away Money to the Electric Company?

Try a few of these energy saving tips using new green products to put cash back in your pocket unless of course you are trying to do your part to keep your electric company’s revenues up.

Install only compact fluorescent light bulbs

The abbreviation for Compact Fluorescent Lamp is CFL, sometimes known as a circular fluorescent bulb.

CFLs produce light on a different principle than incandescent bulbs. When an incandescent bulb is turned on, current is sent through a wire filament. The filament heats up until it starts to glow, and the glow produces light. A CFL is a sealed tube of glass filled with argon gas. Mixed with the argon is some mercury vapor. When an electrical current is applied, an invisible ultraviolet light is generated. When the ultraviolet light hits the fluorescent coating (called phosphor) on the inside of the tube, visible light is emitted.

The CFL is one of a few green products to help you to stop wasting your money on incandescent bulbs. Even if an incandescent bulb costs less than a $1 at the local store, it will still cost you much more to run it. Replacing a single incandescent bulb with one of the new Energy Star compliant CFLs will save you around $30 a year and last 10 times longer. So let’s see one incandescent bulb every 3 months (4 per year x 2 years = $8) vs. a $6.95 bulb whose life averages 2 years, Hum

Since the development of CFLs, manufacturers have been working on a variety of shades, colors, or “temperatures” of light. Currently you can purchase bulbs that will produce light that is yellow, or warn, all the way to bulbs that produce a hard bluish white light. Used properly, this can accent a well designed room or be used for mood lighting. One area you might want to consider is the outside security lighting. I would not recommend a warm inviting mood light if it is being used as security device; perhaps an unfriendly harsh bluish mood would be better.

Be aware that the daylight or bluer light often appears harsh and can have a negative effect on light sensitive people. You will notice they squint or avoid sitting/standing near this color light. If so just change it out for one of the warmer colors.

Look on the package for a number that ends in K. This stands for Kelvin or the “temperature” of the bulb. A Kelvin rating of 2700K-3000K is a warm/yellow bulb. A Cool White bulb has a rating of 3500K-4100K. A rating of 5000K-6500K is a Daylight blue bulb.

A 9-13 watt CFL will replace a 40 watt incandescent bulb; use a 13-15 watt to replace a 60 watt incandescent bulb; for a 75 watt incandescent bulb use a 18-25 watt CFL; and use a 23-30 watt CFL to replace a 100 watt incandescent bulb.

Please do not forget to recycle all compact fluorescent bulbs. In some states, the law forbids the disposal of any bulbs containing mercury in the regular solid waste trash. There are about five milligrams of mercury in one CFL bulb, or about 1/5 the of mercury found in a normal wrist-watch battery.

To dispose of an old CFL, visit a retailer like ACE Hardware, Orchard, Home Depot or IKEA. Many of them will recycle these bulbs for you.

For decorative lights, consider choosing Energy Star qualified light emitting diode (LED) bulbs. The LED units are great green products and use up to 90% less energy than an equivalent incandescent bulb to produce the same amount of light. I have been told that the power required to burn a single seven-watt incandescent bulb could power up to 140 LEDs! So wherever you used incandescent bulb in the past, replace them with a new CFL, and for outside lighting use the new LED decorative lights. This will save you money and reduce your carbon footprint.

Next time will look at some more green products that can further reduce your carbon footprint and save you still more money.

Michael

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