New Evidence of a Decline In Electricity Use By U.S. Households (wordpress.com) 318
There's some surprising news from the Energy Institute at the University of California's business school. America's households are using less electricity than they did five years ago.
So what is different? Energy-efficient lighting. Over 450 million LEDs have been installed to date in the United States, up from less than half a million in 2009, and nearly 70% of Americans have purchased at least one LED bulb. Compact fluorescent lightbulbs (CFLs) are even more common, with 70%+ of households owning some CFLs. All told, energy-efficient lighting now accounts for 80% of all U.S. lighting sales.
It is no surprise that LEDs have become so popular. LED prices have fallen 94% since 2008, and a 60-watt equivalent LED lightbulb can now be purchased for about $2. LEDs use 85% less electricity than incandescent bulbs, are much more durable, and work in a wide-range of indoor and outdoor settings.
"I would add LED TVs replacing LCD, Plasma and CRTs," writes Slashdot reader schwit1.
It is no surprise that LEDs have become so popular. LED prices have fallen 94% since 2008, and a 60-watt equivalent LED lightbulb can now be purchased for about $2. LEDs use 85% less electricity than incandescent bulbs, are much more durable, and work in a wide-range of indoor and outdoor settings.
"I would add LED TVs replacing LCD, Plasma and CRTs," writes Slashdot reader schwit1.
BS detected (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:BS detected (Score:5, Informative)
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Incidentally, generally speaking LCD TVs are still a step back from plasma. AMOLED on the other hand...
Re:BS detected (Score:5, Funny)
Every time I heard "plasma something" on Star Trek, the hardware in question ended up exploding.
Plasma TV? No thanks.
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The LCD that replaced it when the plasma got smashed?
The plasma has been drinking
Not me, not me, not me, not me, not me
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BMO
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Someone else was drinking, and mistook the plasma TV for a gong.
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Incidentally, generally speaking LCD TVs are still a step back from plasma.
That really depends on how you define better. Plasma TVs use phosphors, which means that they are susceptible to burn in, which means they can be problematic for PC and gaming use. Furthermore, in places where cooling is an issue (here in Phoenix for example) plasma sucks because it produces a LOT of heat, not only using more electricity just to run it, but extra time running the air conditioner as well.
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Well you'd hopefully turn your expensive plasma TV off immediately after watching a movie to avoid burn in. While many households leave an LCD TV running all day long.
Oh chill (Score:5, Informative)
Enough with the nerd rage over marketing terms. You should be clever enough to have figured out that "LED TV" is used to mean "LCD TV with an LED backlight instead of CCFL" and OLED TVs are called, well, OLED. The LED backlight is, by the way, not a trivial thing when it comes to power use. If you look at an LCD most of the power it consumes comes from the backlight, with only a bit from the panel itself. So if you replace an older style set that uses CCFL backlights with a newer ones that uses LED backlights, you cut power consumption by a non-trivial amount.
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Reminds me of a few years ago my sister (who is very environmentally conscious) was using Blackle [blackle.com] instead of Google in order to save energy (they even advertise the number of watt hours "saved" under the search bar).
She was a bit dejected when I informed her that LCD screens don't use less energy displaying black vs. white, since black is merely produced by blocking the light, and that the only way to save power was to turn the brightness on her laptop down.
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the only way to save power was to turn the brightness on her laptop down
one positive thing about the cell phone era is this fact is really front and center with any phone over a couple years old. Not sure people would really notice their laptop battery life from screen usage given the amount of charge it can hold.
A cell phone on the other hand shows that quite quickly
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Well the thing about smart phones is a lot of them have OLED screens, where it makes more sense that displaying a black pixel uses less power than a white pixel. Although TBH I don't know for sure if that is the case.
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Emissive LED screen tech (Score:3)
If her phone was using an emissive LED tech, such as the Galaxy S7's OLED display (and a fairly long list of others), a black screen does use less energy.
It's only LCD displays with LED backlights that behave as you describe.
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I said it was LCD. I also said it was her laptop.
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Still, she has the right idea, and likely the tech will get into her hands eventually.
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Makes me laugh because pretty much the same thing happened to me.
My mom called and asked about Blackle, which I'd never heard of, and if she really needed to use it. My "save the world little sister" had changed her computer to use it, but mom found it harder to read. I told her no, with LCDs it doesn't matter. Also even funnier is that it actually ever so slightly increases power usage on many LCDs. Why? Well TN panels, which are still quite popular (and were pretty much the only thing back then) are white
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I would add: high efficiency heating and cooling units - insulation requirements in building codes, plus the fact that the McMansion trend has topped out and we're not adding 100 sq ft per year to the average home size lately.
That's o.k. - wait for rechargeable electric vehicles to get some adoption in the marketplace, electricity usage will rise again.
Re:BS Bills Are Still The Same Amount (Score:5, Interesting)
Here is a chart [eia.gov] of electricity prices in America since 1960. When corrected for inflation, prices today are about the same as 50 years ago. So, no, I don't think there has been any vast conspiracy to raise prices.
I have cut my consumption by about 40% in the last ten years. Since California has tiered pricing, and all my consumption is in the bottom tier (about 10 cents/kw-hr), my electricity bill is less than half what it was in 2007.
All my lights are LED.
All TVs and monitors went from CRT to flatscreen.
New more efficient refrigerator.
New dishwasher with air drying.
Attic fan to reduce need for A/C.
Ceiling fans in all bedrooms.
Clip fans under every desk.
All outside lights triggered by motion sensors.
And by far the biggest energy saver: Teenage daughter moved and and went to college.
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It's amazing how much extra temp you can handle when your t-shirt is wet
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I tried that trick when we moved from Chicago to Houston last year. I went to sit on the sofa in my wet t-shirt and my wife chased me off with a rolled up newspaper.
In places like this, the air conditioning is more for the humidity than the heat. When the thermostat is set above 75, I end up with severe swamp ass.
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I can't tolerate temperatures above 22 degrees. I have to turn on AC if it goes higher. Ideally I like it to be 15 degrees inside of my house at all times.
Let me guess, your BMI is above 30?
Fat people have a thicker layer of insulation and overheat easier. The volume to surface area ratio also means that perspiration has less of a cooling effect.
Fortunately, something can be done about it besides turning on an air conditioner.
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Yes, there are illnesses that can cause overheating, but that's not the general case. Healthy people should be able to deal with 12-30C temperature ranges without any real problems, and if it is a problem beyond "it would be nicer if it were cooler/warmer", seeing a doctor should be the first thing to do, not buying an AC.
Saunas (Nordic ones that are actually in the 90-100C range) work because your body goes into a special mode, restricting blood flow to the surface. It's possible to sit with teeth clatte
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Ceiling fans in all bedrooms.
I have a 2.3 kw split airconditioner in a bedroom in my house. I have never managed to get it to use more than 85 watts. The only time I saw 85 watts was when the room was about 40 deg C (104F) and it was set to cool it to 17C (62F). It tends to cycle between about 45 watts and 1.8 watts when it is just set to run all the time. That keeps it cool and uses less power than the ceiling fan. The worst part of ceiling fans is they often use the J series halogen tube bulbs that
Re: BS Bills Are Still The Same Amount (Score:2)
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And by far the biggest energy saver: Teenage daughter moved and and went to college.
So you're paying $X0,000 per year in tuition to save $Y0/mo on power?
Good deal that :-)
Re:BS Bills Are Still The Same Amount (Score:5, Informative)
Well prices are expected to go up over time due to inflation. The real problem is that wages have been stagnant, and haven't kept pace with inflation.
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Your welcome!
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I think it's all supposed to trickle down somehow.
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And of course this would mean the GOP is in favor of double taxation
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You realize those high tax states subsidize the low tax states...?
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What about my welcome?
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Also end-stage capitalism.
Basically, totalitarianism is end-stage [insert soio-economic system here], for the simple reason that wealth and power are self-catalyzing, and so *any* system that allows individuals to accumulate them without restriction, via any means, will eventually end up concentrating enough wealth and power into the hands of the few that they no longer need to concern themselves with the opinions of the masses.
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Scandinavia and Europe...
Scandinavia is part of Europe last time I checked...
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It's totalitarian because that's the only way socialist states can stay in power.
The US is a socialist state to some extent. The government has a fair amount of control in health, education, sanitation and defence. Those are all elements of a socialist state.
Re:BS Bills Are Still The Same Amount (Score:4, Insightful)
It's a socialist state in denial. I blame a generation getting intensive cold war propaganda: They know that socialism is evil, oppressive and unamerican, they just don't know what socialism actually means.
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One of the PUDs in this area specifically raised prices because people weren't consuming as much.
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Re:BS Bills Are Still The Same Amount (Score:4, Insightful)
Well prices are expected to go up over time due to inflation. The real problem is that wages have been stagnant, and haven't kept pace with inflation.
From year to year I think inflation and CPI is an okay measure. Over long stretches of time, well... according to some measures the US middle class hasn't improved at all since the 1970s. But if you took a family from 1970 and transported them to 2017, would they want to go back? There's no internet. No PCs. No cell phones. No digital cameras. Maybe there's lots of things you'd spend money on in 1970 that doesn't really make any sense in 2017. There will be things in 2017 that no money can buy in 1970, what's the value of that? Average lifespan has gone up from 71 to 79 years, what's 8 more years of life worth? That you get more money and spend more money is hardly the only valid way to quantify life.
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Watching the moon landing was epic!
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If wage disparity were reduced to 1970's levels
I don't get why people care so much about wage disparity. What does it matter how much richer than you the richest are? What matters is how you live, and the average -- or even bottom tier -- person in the 2010s lives longer, eats better, is less likely to suffer violence, has a larger home, has cleaner air and water, etc., etc., etc., for almost any variable you can name than someone in the same position 40 years earlier.
Why the focus on comparing your position to that of others, rather than appreciating
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I know you're trolling, but....
If it bothers you THAT much, just go off grid. Solar panels plus some batteries and a "lender of last resort" propane generator. You'll sleep soundly knowing you're not being fucked by the man even though you're probably now paying more for your electrons.
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Good luck with that.
EV charging (Score:5, Interesting)
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But, then autonomous cars may change the formula again...
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No, I think you're making a flawed assumption.
If people typically charge their cars at their workplaces, then yes, daytime usage and commercial usage will both see a jump over the next few years. But I don't think that's going to be terribly prevalent. I think most people will charge at home at night. The push for workplace charging has been mainly due to the short range of EVs--most have been around 60-80 miles, which means charging at work makes a huge difference. As we move to the 200+ mile range wit
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Note that if EV becomes more prevalent, expect more charging ports at work, but for many of those outlets to be off. I would anticipate the charging network at work to allow only X amount of charging, and the behavior would be negotiated based on things like the claimed remaining range of a car.
Also expect employment to partner with companies like chargepoint, so that the employees will pay for whatever they use, perhaps at some premium to discourage at-work charging...
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so that the employees will pay for whatever they use, perhaps at some premium to discourage at-work charging...
That don't make sense. Companies are more likely to want to encourage at-work charging, but in a manner that doesn't cost the company $$$, so parterning with Chargepoint, etc makes sense.
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Attracting and keeping quality employees requires paying out up front. Especially in the IT world, but even basic govt contracting...if you're providing an EV charge ability...that will attract employees.
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Crikey. At that price I'd expect it to be served in Melania Trump's snatch.
Or perhaps it's due to the apostrophe tax.
Re: EV charging (Score:2)
Why would I charge at home at night? If I share at work, my job may pay for it. And really, I'm just going to charge whenever I'm near a plug, because I don't want to run out (can't just go to a gas station). The idea that people will charge when convenient for the network vs when convenient for them is a bit silly
So your job pays for your gas now? (Score:2)
Well, let's put it this way. If your job is currently happy to pay for your gasoline or diesel right now, then yes, I expect they'll be happy to pay for your electrons instead (especially as it will cost them less, at least until the driving infrastructure taxation catches up.)
If they don't, however, I think you can most likely look forward to feeding an electron vending machine your money, assuming there are charging facilities
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Re: So your job pays for your gas now? (Score:2)
Every company I've ever worked at with car charge ports, they were free. So yeah, makes sense to assume it will continue. And since like most people I go to the most convenient gas station rather than drive looking for 2 cents cheaper, yes I'd pay for it anyway
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He is wrong of course, but its pervasive throughout. Wishful thinking instead of skilled prediction.
If no disruptive technologies come forth, its a pretty sure bet that people will charge up wherever its "free" to do so, and one of the places where it will be "free" are shopping centers. Home Depot will charge you up while you shop because their competition Lowes doesn't, forcing Lowes to offer "free" char
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I have a 75 mile round trip and would LOVE an electric vehicle. Beyond the current production teslas, nothing has enough range to reliably handle that commute...given battery degradaton, AC or heater usage, even 100 mi range likely isn't enough
People will want to be topping up while at work.
An interesting caveat, I have garage parking at work. People might opt for outdoor parking so they could deploy thei
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A Leaf with the 30kWh battery would handle that commute easily. Also, the range of the Chevy Spark would probably be sufficient.
But.... it does depend on where you live. I noticed a significant reduction in range during the very mild N. Cal winter in my Leaf.
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I wonder what even a small solar panel on the roof might do to help out.
Key word "households" (Score:5, Interesting)
The number of people in an average household has decreased [statista.com]. It's not surprising that fewer individuals use less electricity.
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The number of people in an average household has decreased [statista.com]. It's not surprising that fewer individuals use less electricity.
Nope. It's just a bad summary. TFA deals with "U.S. residential electricity consumption per capita 1990-2015," so if they mean "households," it's on a collective basis rather than per household.
However, I find it hard to believe that lighting alone is responsible for this (though I might be biased since I've long used CFLs, was an early adopter of LEDs, and would not even consider incandescents for general use). Could it also be more energy-efficient computer processors (and more laptops, tablet, etc. usage
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They pretty much outlawed the standard 60 watt and higher incandescent light bulb in the US, people can't as easily buy them. LED and CFL bulbs are being introduced to households through attrition as old bulbs die, not because people are excited for them. Some LEDs are damn close to 'the look' now though.
The other huge factor (Score:2, Interesting)
There's efficency and then there's effiencey... (Score:3)
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If you're paying for the electricity, and the lights, I'd demand LED since the longer term will cost less.
I replaced all of my lighting with LED in my home. I'm renting.
In my basement I replaced three 4ft florescent light fixtures (with 2 tubes each) in my basement with LED tubes by rewiring the light enclosure (ie. cutting out the ballast, and wiring directly to the tombstones, yes with landlords consent). Went from 6 fluorescent tubes to 3 LED tubes and I'm getting even better light output. The electricit
Re:There's efficency and then there's effiencey... (Score:4, Informative)
Bullshit. What's happened is that the ballast is not working properly and the maintenance people make more money replacing tubes every 6 months than replacing the ballast.
Relevance? (Score:2)
Knock-on effect on cooling (Score:3)
For those of us who live in hot / temperate places where air conditioning is a way of life, going to LED lights and LED-backlit TVs have a knock-on effect -- much less energy is wasted as heat - heat that then has to be dealt with by the air conditioning systems.
Surely the power companies knew this was coming, right?
On a related tangent, I'm old enough to remember the first wave of solar euphoria euphoria in the 70's. That wave really didn't go anywhere fast. Solar panels aren't efficient enough to power tungsten and CRT, and fluorescent lighting isn't that much more efficient.. but with LED? Yeah, solar now really does have a chance.. but not because solar.. but because LED... oh and modern batteries / capacitors to hold stored energy.
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Big power hungry desktops don't use 200 watts anymore.
Also, those "power efficient" tablets aren't self-reliant. Anything interesting will require the use of a more powerful machine somewhere. That machine may be far away across an entire sea of devices creating the network required to connect the tablet to it's missing computing power.
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Big power hungry desktops don't use 200 watts anymore.
Mine peaks out around 300W, and it is a delicate flower. Building a serious VR rig will easily get you up over 600W real-world power consumption.
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even in the 1990's they had power saving modes of operation ... in fact they are identical to the ones used today
hell even my 486 would spin down the hard drive, cut off the monitor and go into a sleep mode dropping the power down to the ten's of watts, meanwhile today, everyone has 16 billion 5 volt chargers sitting idol 24/7 consuming less than a watt each, but all added together over a day probably uses more than a pentium in sleep mode
and unlike the pentium, they wont be shut off ... they dont run windo
Why has electric use increased since 1990? (Score:2)
Instead of asking why electricity use has dropped slightly since 2010, why has electricity use increased so much since 1990? I take these figures to be residential electric use because factoring in industrial - factories - and commercial -- offices, stores, and schools, the per capita use would be considerably higher.
Year 1990 doesn't seem like some opening-a-frontier event like rural electrification or replacing coal home heating with home natural gas service. You would think that everyone wanting cen
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LED bulbs have high-voltage power electronics in there. By quality (e.g. Philips, but avoid Osram, they are still figuring it out) and they will live as long as advertised and be much, much cheaper overall than all alternatives. Buy cheap ones and you will get bulbs designed by people that do not have sufficient experience and will fail much sooner. LED bulbs do typically not fail in the LEDs, these are well-understood. They fail in the power-converters. This is not a surprise either.
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Agreed. Don't buy bargain bin crap from Walmart or Costco.
I buy Philips exclusively and they are fantastic. Cost about $5.50/bulb. Have 20 of them and never an issue.
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LED bulbs have high-voltage power electronics in there. By quality (e.g. Philips,
Can't emphasise this enough. The LEDs themselves will be fine probably in cheap brands, but the power supply won't be. Good SMPSs are expensive to design and make. There's no substiture worth it.
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I have had incandescent brands not last more than 2 weeks, and CFL's shit themselves within a month
what does it mean? There's always a shit brand, and your limited experience is not the same as the average experience
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To counter your poor experience, I have roughly 30 LED bulbs of various ages up to 4 years, and several brands. Not a single one has failed yet. My experience with early CFLs was very short life and horrible startup effects, never liked them.
Fully enclosed fixtures will be hard on the internal electronics due to heat build up. Seems most complaints in forums for short LED life are for those recessed ceiling light fixtures.
Stick to the name brands, most of mine are the cheap non-dimmable philips. I liked the
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Costco has a ten-pack of LED bulbs for $4.95. That is 50 cents each. At that price, the payback for typical use is less than ONE MONTH when replacing incandescents. LED bulbs have none of the drawbacks of CFLs. They are instantly bright, they are durable (I dropped one 8 feet onto a concrete floor, and it bounced), and they contain no toxic mercury.
My house now has exactly one incandescent bulb: In my son's lava lamp, where a dim hot bulb is exactly what is needed.
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Costco has a ten-pack of LED bulbs for $4.95.
Do they last? The glass globes have fallen off about half of my original cree lights. Oddly the light I have which has lasted the longest is a CFL. I have it over the stove, where you would expect it to die rapidly. Nope. It's outlasted two LED lamps and countless incandescents. I put it in there on a whim to see if it would last any better than the other options, and yes. Yes it does.
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You have to leave your lights on a lot in order to pay for them in only a month!
linky [sewelldirect.com]
A 60w incandescent bulb costs $17/year to operate at 6 hours/day @ $0.12/ Kwh (your electric rate).
A 60w led bulb costs $2.15/year to operate at 6 hours/day @ $0.12/ Kwh (your electric rate).
That's a $15/year savings when purchasing a $0.50 LED bulb (10pack) from Lowes/Costco.
BR> $15/12 = $1.20~ savings per month. You'd pay for it's savings in a month even if you only used the bulb 3 hours a day.
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It gets dark by 8pm in most places (yearly average). Unless you've got iron shins, your lights are on quite a bit.
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If you have incandescent bulbs which last 15 years and LED bulbs which last 6 months, you're doing something terribly wrong. My CFLs have lasted about 8 years average; LEDs should be as long or longer. Incandescents were rarely more than 18 months, aside from specialty bulbs.
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I love them, I have been buying the great value ones for a few years now, and all but 2 lights in my house are LED (just cause in the year I have lived here only those two havent burned out yet)
I got some as well from the local utility, they are a nicer brand, but I do notice, when you first flip them on they flash, dim and resettle (like in a period of a few ms, I notice it, my wife doesnt) Which ever so slightly annoys me, but also tells me they have better current regulation as its catching the inrush, s
Re:LEDs lighting is cheaper, but it's also better (Score:4, Informative)
They're surprisingly nice, too! I can hardly distinguish their light from a real 60 watt incandescent. Not like the original CFLs that gave everything a strange tint
The key is to make sure you get the right color temperature. For the "soft-white" look that everyone loves from incandescents, you want 2700K.
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I exclusively use Philips branded 8.5W (60W equiv), 5000K, 800 lumen bulbs inside my house. Outside I have 4 floodlights (two in the back yard, two in my car port, all on motion sensors).
I'm down to 20 bulbs for my whole house. There's at least 9 empty sockets now since I get much better light output from these bulbs.
LED lighting has also paved the way for Solar powered lights. My front door has a solar powered LED light (Mpow brand from Amazon), and a couple of solar/led garden lights in my front yard for
While I'm not arguing against efficient homes (Score:4, Informative)
You are understating the costs a whole lot. $1500 isn't what it costs to do a good job insulating a home. You can spend that on a single good window. It costs quite a bit to get a well made window with two (or three) panes of low-e glass, filled with an inert gas, and so on and then of course you have to pay to have the old one cut out and the new one installed. You can get something much lesser quality and just drop it in the existing thin frame for a good bit less, but you don't get the big efficiency gains unless you do it right and have ti really redone.
So on a normal house with some big windows and sliding glass doors you can hit $5-10k easily just in redoing your glass.
Walls are another matter. Depending on the construction of your house, it can me pretty to very costly to insulate your walls. If you have something that is drywall mounted straight on concrete block, there's nowhere to insert insulation. You have to either tear down the drywall, add in framing, insulate in that, and put up new drywall (which also cuts down on the size of rooms) or tear off the exterior facade, add insulation, and put up a new one. Either way it's 5 figures to do.
It's a lot of money to renovate an old home and make it energy efficient.
Re: Sadly the #1 electric use in the south is stil (Score:2)
Most Southerners that have poorly insulated homes aren't too stupid but too poor to have a well insulated home. New homes in the South are very well insulated. I live in Arkansas which is considered a backwater even in the South. My home is about 3 years old with 2x6 exterior construction with an insulated concrete slab foundation and close to three feet of cellulose insulation in the attic. My AC barely runs except when it is above 100F or it is so damned humid I turn the thermostat down to make that m
Re: Lights? Really? Not here. (Score:2)
If you're using tablets for reading instead of lights, you're most likely spending more and harming your eyes.
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>IKEA reduced their Tertial work lamp to 13 watts, down from 250 watts.
And it accepts "normal" sized bulbs?
This sounds like a plague of house fires.
--
BMO
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Utilities have to recover their capital costs. They paid $X for a shiny new power plant. And just because you aren't using it doesn't mean that the utilities commission isn't going to let them earn their regulated ROI on it. They take their costs and spread them across fewer and fewer kWhs sold. Prices go up.
Re:This is why you can ignore warming alarmists (Score:5, Insightful)
As the use of LED's and electric cars spreads (which is inevitable) we'll reduce energy usage even further - all without a single punishing act of legislation.
The green energy push has had significant help from government regulations and subsidies, which is why they exist. Appropriate regulation improves quality of life, and this is no different. In a real free market we'd still be living industrial age smog and air pollution.