Being energy efficient is a hot topic. More and more families want to do their part to reduce their energy consumption and carbon footprint. Many think that reducing your carbon footprint means using 100% renewable energy. The truth is you can save money even if you can’t go green with solar energy. (BTW, Pogo only provides 100% renewable energy to our customers. I guess you can say that we are your green energy option).
There are a lot of things you can do to reduce the amount of electricity you consume. Reducing energy consumption also helps to reduce the amount you pay for electricity. We aren’t talking about re-insulating your home or doing other expensive updates. Most people can’t replace all their home appliance or upgrade their windows (at least not all at once). The good news is, you don’t have to.
The change we are talking about is switching from incandescent light bulbs to energy efficient LED light bulbs. This switch makes a big difference to help you become energy efficient. But we don’t want you to take our word for it. The savings is in the math. We want to explain the math and show you how much you will save by replacing old light bulbs with LED light bulbs.
Reducing your energy consumption
Let’s start small with replacing one typical A-10 incandescent light bulb with a typical LED light bulb. To make things easy to keep track of, we made a spiffy chart for you to reference.
For the cost of electricity per kWh, we are using $0.11, and for how long the light is on per week we are using 70 hours (just in case you were wondering how we came up with these results).
Switching 1 incandescent light bulb for 1 LED light bulb
By switching 1 light bulb, these are the savings and math:
Net savings per hour– $0.01
Net savings per week– $0.43
Net savings per month– $1.88
Net savings per year– $22.57
But let’s face it, no one replaces 1 light bulb if they are switching with the purpose of saving. So let’s do the math for replacing all the light bulbs in your home. I went from room to room in my house and counted a total of 48 light bulbs. To make the math easier, let’s round up to 50. If you were to replace 50 light bulbs, the savings becomes more impactful. Keeping the same run time, and same cost per kWh and check out what your potential savings could be!
Swapping 50 incandescent light bulbs for LED light bulbs
You might be wondering how this is even possible? Let us explain. Even though an LED bulb costs considerably more than an incandescent bulb, the LED bulb lasts 15,000 hours compared to the 1,000 hours that an incandescent bulb lasts. So to put it in perspective, spending $3.50 on 15,000 hours when you purchase an LED bulb is the same as buying 15 incandescent bulbs to reach 15,000 hours, which means that you are spending $15 for the same amount of run time. When you then factor in the amount of wattage that each bulb uses, 60 watts vs. 9 watts, it is an obvious reduction in energy consumption. Your savings can increase especially when you consider that this decrease in consumption is only for 50 bulbs.
The truth is in your energy savings
The bottom line is, switching out your incandescent light bulbs for energy saving LED Lights will not make you a millionaire, but it will save you money. When you make other changes on top of switching out light bulbs, like upgrading to Energy Efficient appliances, or switching your electric company and/or plan to one that you can actually understand and track your electric usage, you will see a reduction in your energy usage and reap the rewards (and by rewards, we mean giving less money to your electric company).