Energy efficient light bulbs
Color changing LED light SmartHom e.com
$34.99
The incandescent light bulb and its inefficient use of electricity will soon be a thing of the past. Incandescent lights are essentially little electric heaters that just happen to emit light. They’re extremely inefficient, wasting most of the power they consume as heat. Lights are a significant part of the power usage in your home so by replacing all of them with modern efficient Compact Fluorescent Lights (CFLs)or LED lights you will not only save some serious money but will help to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Energystar.gov says on their website that “if every American home replaced just one light bulb with an ENERGY STAR, we would save enough energy to light more than 2.5 million homes for a year and prevent greenhouse gases equivalent to the emissions of nearly 800,000 cars.”
Many new types of energy efficient lighting solutions are now on the market. While they tend to be more expensive to buy up front they will save you money in the long haul in that they last so much longer. They are also less expensive than they used to be and have more attractive shapes, capabilities and other aspects than older models.
CFLs are four times more efficient and last up to 10 times longer than incandescents. A 22 watt CFL has about the same light output as a 100 watt incandescent. CFLs use 50 - 80% less energy than incandescents.
An excellent article on the environmentaldefense.org site discusses all you need to know about choosing the right bulb for your needs. They also have a page with a form to determine the right energy efficient bulb for a given fixture and shape of bulb. Another good read is Popular Mechanics’s, article in their current issue titled “The Best Compact Fluorescent Light Bulbs: PM Lab Test, Can the new breed of energy-saving fluorescents hold their own against incandescents? We ran seven bulbs through our optical course to find out.” that can be read online.
To buy energy efficient lights online you might try smarthome.com who have a wide selection of interesting CFL, LED light bulbs and many other types including the cool color changing one shown in the photo. Another very good online source, with a very wide selection of all kinds of energy efficient lighting is the Conservastore.com.
August 13th, 2008 12:26
I just bought some of those CFL light bulbs and they work great. They are really saving me a lot of money and they last so long. I like how small they are too.