Switch to CFLs

A couple years ago I was helping a friend move. He handed me a box of incandescent light bulbs and asked me to remove the compact fluorescent bulbs (CFLs) throughout the house and replace them with the incandescent ones. He explained that when they had moved in, they had installed all CFLs and had saved a lot on their energy bills. Because CFLs are more expensive, they wanted to take them along as they moved. The next time we were at Sam’s Club, I bought a package of CFLs, noting that they put out the same amount of light with less than a quarter of the energy use. As we’ve gradually transitioned to the CFLs, there has been a decrease in our energy bills. Now, I’m not sure how much of the decrease is attributable to the CFLs and how much to my increased awareness about energy use in general, but I’m positive it has helped.

There are disadvantages to CFLs. They take a couple minutes to reach full brightness, and the light they emit is not as warm and pleasant as that from incandescents. As mentioned above, CFLs are more expensive, but that seems to be more than offset by two factors: they don’t seem to burn out as often and they use far less energy. Unfortunately, they contain a bit of mercury, so you have to be careful when one breaks, but you have to be careful when any light bulb breaks, right? For me, the energy savings outweigh the downsides.

It’s worth mentioning that I’m absolutely NOT in favor of Congress forcing us to move from the incandescent to CFLs. It’s none of their business and one of those things that would largely happen over time without a mandate anyway. I use CFLs because the savings in energy use translates into saving me money.

Natural Air Conditioning

We have found that heating and cooling our home can be quite expensive.  Now that we are in Florida and in a house with an old air conditioning, we've learned the value of opening the windows and turning on the fans.  Our energy company allows us to access our account online to see how much per day we spend on electricity. The graph conveniently also displays the temperature outside, so you can see how the temperature affects your electricity bill.  We've decided that it's sometimes worth being warm to save the $5 it cost to run our A/C for a day.

If you don't have a smart meter or user-friendly power company, you could do the math yourself on how many kilowatt hours per day you are using.  Just figure out which meter is yours and then multiply the daily change by the cost per kilowatt hour.

I realize that it might not be 85 degrees in Virginia right now like it is in Florida, so this may be a tip to tuck away for next year.