Ok...as I'm sure most of you may expect, nearly all my light bulbs in my home are energy efficient. Nearly all are CFLs throughout the house....nearly all are 13W with only a couple being 23W (outdoor lights). There's only 5 lights that are not:
1) Master Bedroom ceiling fan. I have 1 @ 40W bulb here. For some reason the CFLs flicker...and I've tried all the 'fixes' online and none work. So I'm stuck with the 40W bulbs. At least I'm only using 1 bulb instead of 2.
2) Dining Room chandelier. It's dimmable and has 5 @ 40W bulbs.
3) Breakfast Nook chandelier. Same as #2, but has 6 @ 40W bulbs
4) Kitchen track lighting. It's dimmable and has 5 @ 50W GU10 bulbs
5) Entry way chandelier. 3 @ 40W bulbs.
Out of all these lights, the Kitchen and breakfast nook lights are what I use by far the most. As I'm typing this I'm glancing at my TED5000 seeing the two lights...dimmed...still using about 350W. Ugh!
So changing these two lights out...11 bulbs...could provide some good savings. However, I just can't stomach paying the high prices for light bulbs. A non-dimmable Chandelier CFL light bulb is $4 each. That's at least fairly reasonable...I could probably switch out the Entry Way chandelier with these. But not my two dimmable chandeliers. A 5W (25W equivalent) dimmable CFL light bulb is $8 each. It's $15 for a LED version (4W) nondimmable bulb. To get dimmable...$23. So, if I wanted to go LED, it would cost me $138 to replace the one dimmable chandeliers. Seriously?!? To replace my kitchen lighting with dimmable LED GU10 bulbs is $32 EACH. That's another $160. Total = $298....before shipping and taxes. Adding in the other dimmable chandelier would add in another $115 for $413 total.
I just don't think I can stomach this. I know there's the math that says they pay for themselves....but I just need to check for myself.
So let's take the kitchen light...5 @ 50W light bulbs = 250W when on @ full power (side note: with the dimmer I'm rarely at full power). Talking with my wife...let's assume it's on 3 hrs/day on average. That's 750Wh/d or $0.075/day at $0.10/kWh. On average that's $2.28/month or $27.38/year. A new LED light bulb appears to be 6.5W for a 50W 'equivalent'. That equates to 97.5Wh/d or $0.00975/day or $3.56/yr. So annual savings on this light would be $23.82. Thus, my return on investment would be: $160/23.82 = 6.72 years. That's a pretty dang long time for a light bulb. Now the dimmable LED light bulb claims that it'll last 25,000 hours (http://www.polar-ray.com/GU10-LED-Bulbs_c_159.html). I've seen this before...my CFL's "claim" they'll last 12,000 hours....and I have yet to be convinced (I've replaced burned out CFLs). OK...so 25,000 hours is equivalent to 2.85 years if run 24/7. Converting to 3 hrs/day that's 22.83 years. So, even cutting this in half to ~11.4 years still shows the bulbs will pay for themselves.
Still...I think I'm going to wait until prices are more reasonable. It's said that prices are falling rapidly...so maybe once my ROI is closer to 2-3 years will I decide to 'splurge'. Until then...I think I'll just deal with my $2.28/mo....and truthfully it's going to be less than that because I use my dimmer...a lot. I'm constantly turning the lighting down (with my wife doubling-back to turn it back up...and then I'm back...etc, etc). It sure would be nice to not have to worry constantly about those lights...
Your master bedroom fan probably has a wattage regulator in it. The purpose of this regulator is to prevent you from putting in light bulbs that go over the recommended wattage for the fixture (like putting in four 200 watt bulbs). The wattage regulator has a problem though ... it also prevents you from going too low in wattage. This is why when you put 4 CFL bulbs in it they flicker. Put 2 CFL bulbs and two 40 watt bulbs in and I bet it works perfectly. This is because by adding the 40 watt bulbs it puts you in the correct watt range for the wattage regulator. My advice: cut the wattage regulator out. This is what I did on all of my fans. Problem solved.
ReplyDelete