Six months ago, a friend pressed on me a six-pack of compact fluorescent light (CFL) bulbs. Odd little pig-tail curls, but they fit in standard light bulb places. He's a retired electrician, so I listened when he gave me what turns out to be valuable advice: "These give out the same amount of light as a 60-watt incandescent. They use one-quarter of the electricity. The home stores put them on sale regularly for about $4 for a six-pack. Buy them and replace every bulb in your house. Don't wait for them to burn out, because every day you keep the old ones, you waste money. And they'll last for years."
I followed his advice, added some aggressiveness turning off unused lights and "vampire" rechargers and "instant on" appliances. And now, I'm looking at an electric bill showing my usage is half --- 50% --- of what it was a year ago.
80 years ago, Alabama Power created Reddy Kilowatt (Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia) the little lightning-bolt figure, to promote electricity usage. Not surprisingly, today the electric utilities are less interested in encouraging conservation than promoting consumption, but they had the sensitivity to retire Reddy Kilowatt years ago. I suspect he's in a twelve-step program with Mr. Butts (Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia), the 8-foot tall kid-friendly "public service" cigarette character from Gary Trudeau's comic strip Doonesbury.
Retire Reddy at your house, too. If you're like me, you'll cut your electric bill in half. For me, that's worth $75 per month. All for a $30 investment in light bulbs and a few minutes swapping them all out.
According to Compact Fluorescent Light Bulbs : ENERGY STAR, if every American home replaced just one light bulb with a CFL that meets Energy Star standards, "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."
Help save the climate. Stuff it to OPEC and Big Coal. Get your compact fluorescent lights (CFL) on the job this weekend.
And don't forget that extra six-pack to give to a friend.
Posted by dougsimpson at November 16, 2006 07:51 PM