Lighten your utility bill

Holiday displays and decorations twinkle in yards and on homes throughout the region. These decorative lights are low wattage – about 10 watts per traditional colored light to as low as 0.04 watts for the light emitting diode (LED) variety. According to Avista Utilities, the monthly electricity cost for 10 strings of LEDs is just a blip, only 36 cents, while a 10-string of traditional lights costs $22.50.

The higher cost for the traditional lights is because they’re incandescent bulbs and use more energy. Incandescent bulbs use electricity to heat a tiny coil of tungsten wire, a filament, until it becomes white hot and produces light. About 90 percent of the electricity used is lost as heat.

Still, such pretty lights. We only use them once a year. It’s one of our favorite traditions. Given other holiday expenses, the cost is really rather small. Fine.

But where else in the average home are incandescent lights used, and used year-round? Everywhere – indoor and out. And the cost of that usage adds up. The U.S. Energy Information Administration reports that a typical household spends about 10 to 15 percent of its annual electric bill on lighting.

However, about 10 percent of U.S. households reduce their annual lighting costs by using compact fluorescent lights, glass tubes coated with phosphors. When voltage passes through electrodes at each end a tube, a small amount of vaporized mercury inside is activated and emits ultraviolet energy. The phosphors absorb the UV energy, fluoresce, and produce light. This technology produces light output (lumens) equivalent to or greater than incandescent bulbs, but requires only ¼ to 1/3 the electricity.

In addition, CFL bulbs last about 10 times longer than incandescent bulbs. While CFLs cost more than incandescent bulbs (60-watt CFLs are about $3.50-4.00), according to the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, on average the CFLs’ longer life amounts to more than $15 per year in electricity savings, paying back their cost in six months.

CFLs are screw-in type bulbs and fit into conventional sockets and most existing fixtures. They come in different sizes, shapes and wattages. To save the most energy using CFLs, Avista’s online Home Energy Library suggests you “place them where they will be used most frequently, and for long periods of time. For instance, in your kitchen, living room or family room, in the family bath, and in reading lamps.” CFLs are also good candidates for hard-to-reach areas, like cathedral ceilings or porch lights.

In the past, fluorescent-tube lighting has been faulted for not producing “natural” light. But with today’s technology, a range of CFL color rendering (a light’s warmth or coolness) options are available. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Energy, are promoting the use of energy-efficient products by awarding the Energy Star label to products that save energy.

Regarding CFL color rendering, the Energy Star Web site maintains that “qualified fixtures and bulbs give off the same amount of light as incandescent or halogen lighting, while providing a true and natural color without the flicker, hum or buzz. In addition, CFL technology has advanced dramatically in recent years to produce light that is warm and inviting.”

So CFLs are judged aesthetically pleasing. Versus incandescent lights, they’re shown to save homeowners money. But, according to Energy Star information, CFL usage can have a much larger impact. If every U.S. household changed their five most-frequently used light fixtures, or the light bulbs in them, with qualified Energy Star lights, together we’d keep more than 1 trillion pounds of greenhouse gases out of our air, the Web site reports. “This would be equivalent in air pollution to taking more than 8 million cars off the road for an entire year.”