- Intro
- Reducing electricity consumption I: Lighting
- Reducing electricity consumption II: vampire/standby power
- Reducing electricity usage III: major appliances
- Renewable energy for the home
- Cutting the cord
- Reducing heating and cooling costs
- Reducing water consumption
Conservatives want you to pry their 100w incandescent bulb from their cold, dead hands, but very few things provide a better bang-for-the-buck in savings than upgrading your lighting. The potential savings are nothing short of dramatic, and it was here that I began my energy conservation journey. When I first decided to reduce my carbon consumption, I created this spreadsheet tracking the consumption of every single electrical device in my house. I don't expect you to make sense of that spreadsheet, it's basically my scratchpad, and I'm not going to organize it better for public consumption.
But to summarize, back in late 2011 I was burning about 9.3 kWh per day in lightning alone, about a third of my overall usage. After my upgrades, my lighting load is around 937 watts, a reduction of 90 percent. Projected annually, I went from 3,395 kWh per year to 342 kWh per year. At $0.19 per kWh, that's a savings of $580 per year. And the cost of those upgrades? Head below the fold for the details. Suffice it to say, I've already made back my investment, and I've done so without sacrificing any comfort, and I'm still finding places to save money (like replacing my outdoor security flood lights with solar-powered ones). Read on for the (excruciatingly detailed) details, but before we start, remember the rules of my energy efficiency journey:
1. I do what I do to save the world. That's my top priority, but... 2. Saving money is important! The upgrades have to make financial sense. 3. Don't sacrifice comfort.
Now let's see, below the fold, how I was able to save so much on lights alone.
INDOORS When I decided to upgrade my lights, I first began with a full audit of my household lighting, cataloguing the power draw of each bulb (this is usually written on the bulb itself). You can see how I did it in the spreadsheet I linked above, but in short, this was my tally: Living Room 6 recessed can lights @ 65w (each) 8 M16 track lights @ 40w 3 Par20 track lights @ 50w Hallway 4 Sconces with 250w halogens Bedrooms 6 CFLs @ 22w Also, 3 CFLs in closets @ 22 w (not added to daily tally since use was nominal) Kitchen 4 recessed can lights @ 65w Under-cabinet light strips @ 440w Bathroom 5 vanity lights @ 50w Powder room 2 sconces with halogens @ 125w Garage/workout room 3 CFLs @ 22w Outdoor entry lights 3 CFLs @ 12w I then estimated how much each light was on, multiplied by the wattage, and got a final tally. So for example, the hallway lights were on an average of two hours per day, so:
4 bulbs x 240w x 2 hours = 2 kWh/day
I also have four ceiling fans with lights, but since those use specialized small CFL bulbs without LED alternative I didn't worry about them. They're seldom on anyway. I also did the math on the powder room halogens. It has a bright skylight (actually sun tunnel), so the lights are never on during the day. In fact, after tracking usage for a few days, I figured those lights were on less than 20 minutes total per day, or at most 27 kWh per year. With my average rate of $0.19 per kWh, that's $5.13 per year. Given that I'd have to replace two sconces as well as the bulbs, I figured payback would essentially be never. Instead, I put in a motion sensing light switch so that the lights wouldn't stay on in an empty room. I figured that $30 switch would be a far more cost-effective way to satisfy Rule #1. Everything else was swapped out.
Standard A19 bulb.
I had already upgraded the standard A19 bulbs in my three bedrooms and closets to CFLs, but they weren't much of an upgrade. The color was atrocious. They would take minutes to fully light up. And the flicker would make me feel nauseous. I could almost understand the right-wing hysteria over light bulbs. If being energy efficient meant this kind of suffering (in the first-world sense), then all the savings in the world wouldn't be enough to justify swapping (rule #3!). But CFLs were nothing more than a transitional technological blip, because by 2012 LEDs were starting to enter the market. Problem was, most were a horrendous cold blue-white color, sitting at around 5K Kelvin in the color scale:
We've been conditioned since the dawn of our species to gravitate toward the warm yellow-orange glow of fire, then candle, then incandescent bulbs. The harsh blue light that early-generation LEDs emitted were a step back from the already horrendous CFLs. However, while the incandescent bulb stayed essentially unchanged since Thomas Edison invented it in 1879, new generation LEDs were progressing at the speed of modern technology. But how could I know which bulbs would make the cut and which ones wouldn't?
In those early days (three years ago!), the range in color and build quality was dramatic, yet the online reviews didn't exist to whittle down the options. Thus, I literally went on Amazon and bought every brand possible, tested them out, returned the ones that didn't make the cut. Turns out that the best bulbs, those made by Cree, were naturally the most expensive, and back then, prices were dramatically higher than they are today. So I spaced out my upgrades over a year, both for financial reasons, and because testing each type of bulb actually took a fair amount of time. Ultimately, here is what I ended up getting:
For my can lights in the living room and kitchen, I got these, using 9.5 watts instead of 65w. I see they're $23 now. I paid about $35 a pop, or $350. And they're so bright I actually dim them down to about 80 percent, so I'm probably saving an extra watt or two per fixture. This was one of the most expensive batch of lights bought, but also offered the biggest savings of the bunch. I went from using 2.6 kWh of electricity a day to 380 watts. Over the course of the year, that meant a whopping 810 kWh less electricity for a savings of $153. It wasn't the biggest bang-for-the-buck purchase of this lot, but it certainly offered the biggest bang (rule #1: I do what I do to save my planet). With today's prices, the financial proposition makes crazy good sense.
For the M16 track lights, I went from 45w to 3.8w with these guys, which are no longer sold. At 2900K, they had just the hint of yellow you'd want in lights that are illuminating artwork. Here's a 10 pack of nearly identical lights for just $50. I paid twice that for mine, so $80. Then, pleased with how economical they were, I added three track-light fixtures for extra light spread. So $110.
The three Par20 track lights illuminate my piano, a critical function in my household (my two kids are stellar pianists in their own right, and if you're wondering about me, check this out). Upgrading those bulbs meant going from 50w to 8w per bulb with these. They're $17 now. I paid $19, or $57. Surprisingly, those bulbs were brighter than the original 50w incandescents. I had to play with placement so the glare wouldn't bother me or the kids while playing.
Replacing the the hallway sconces with halogens was the most disappointing indoor upgrade. First I had to buy new sconces with traditional bulb sockets. That cost a little under $100. Then I put in 9w regular LED bulbs (I use these and generally love them). But really, there's no way to replace 250w of halogen brilliance with 7w. But hey, it's a hallway. After spending time agonizing over whether I could live with it (rule #3), I finally decided that it wasn't that big of a deal. The four 7 watt LED bulbs were adequate to get people from point A to point B, which is the only purpose of a hallway. Total spent on bulbs and sconces, $140. Incidentally, this was the biggest bang for the buck upgrade, going from 2 kWh/day to 56 watts. My annual savings was 710 kWh. For a hallway! And the $135 annual savings in electricity paid for the $140 upgrade essentially in one year.
In the bedrooms we used more of the same bulbs we used in the hallway. Warm white is king! Except ... no it isn't. I had some cool white bulbs I had rejected for use in living areas, sitting in my foyer awaiting return, when I decided on a lark to test them in our garage workout room. Turns out the cold harsh light worked great for that application. Who wants soothing warm colors when you're trying to work up a sweat? The cool white bulbs also worked great in closets, where you want everything brightly lit and colors rendered accurately. My white shirts actually look white. So I was surprised, but yes, there are legitimate uses for those otherwise atrocious cold white lights!
Furthermore, the closet lights are perfect example of a case were LEDs don't make sense given rule #2 (save money), but absolutely do so with rules #1 (save the planet) and #3 (comfort). As to rule 1, even a little less draw is better than more wasteful usage. But #3 is where the closet LEDs really pay off: first of all, like I said, the color rendition of clothes is better, thus making it easier to mix and match outfits. But in addition, the long-life of LEDs means that I don't have to worry about changing bulbs pretty much ever. Our closet is tight, and the ceiling is high, so changing bulbs meant maneuvering a small ladder to get to the bulb and swapping it out. I figure I won't have to do that again for a long time, if ever. All in all, I bought nine of those bulbs, a mixture of warm and cold whites at $10 each, so $90. I see they're a buck cheaper now.
Finding a good bathroom vanity light proved tough, with the only acceptable option ended up being these. I see they use Samsung LEDs now instead of the Crees they had when I bought them. Reviews say the differences are slight, and it's clearly allowed the manufacturer to lower prices down to $15 per bulb. I paid $35 per bulb, which was painful at the time. These bulbs were so bright that lacking a dimmer, I ended up taking one of the five out and used the extra bulb in our entry way lighting. Then the aesthetics of that empty socket got to me, since I'm all OCD and shit, and I put it back in. Total cost, $175.
Next, I spent $350 on these guys for my kitchen under-cabinet lighting. I spent extra to get color changing ones so I can get creative with the kitchen look. This one was kind of funny: before the upgrade, I would (when not cooking) run these under-cabinet lights instead of the overhead cans thinking I was saving money since they were very subdued and dim. Turns out I was running 11 40-watt halogens, or more than double what the three overhead 65w cans were using. I almost had a heart attack. I would leave them on for no reason for hours thinking the draw was negligible. So don't go around thinking "dim equals low energy." I wish I had realized that sooner. The replacement light strips suck 21 watts instead of 440. I could've spent less money, but I wanted that RGB (color) function, and payoff was still a respectable 3 1/2 years. Today, I would take a serious look at the Phillips Hue light strips to integrate the lights into my home automation system, but those weren't around when I did the upgrades.
Finally, I swapped out incandescent bulbs in my refrigerator, in a rare "this will never pay off" moment. I figured that going from 40w bulbs to these 2.2w ones would save me a little when the door was open, but even more in cooling costs, as the fridge wouldn't have to work extra to cool down those bulbs after the door was closed. There's no way for me to quantify any savings, though I doubt I got back the $33 I spent on them, particularly since I got a new fridge in early December.
In the "failed experiment" category, I bought a set of Ikea LED light strips and tried using them as accent lighting in several places—under the piano, behind the TV, under the bed (kinda going for this sort of effect), and the effort failed miserably. The lights were too dim, there were too many cables, and my perseverance level was too low. So that experiment died when I didn't feel like justifying the extra 6w of electricity draw and I returned the lights.
Overall, I spent $1,285. So with annual savings of $580 per year, my break-even time was just over two years and represents a third of my overall efficiency gains. I've now paid for those bulbs and can reinvest the savings into further efficiency upgrades. The payoff time would've been even shorter had I not swapped out the refrigerator and closet bulbs, since those are on so little, but remember Rule #1: I do this first and foremost for the environment. If I can have greater efficiency gains in some bulbs (like the hallway) subsidize the smaller gains in others, that works too. And if you haven't noticed—I haven't even factored in the cost of replacement bulbs. Incandescents needed replacement at least yearly.
The promised long life of CFLs didn't pan out for me, they were always going out. But in three years of LED lighting, I still haven't had a single bulb fail. Given the number of lights in my house, the replacement cost of traditional incandescents might not be trivial, but I never bothered to try and calculate it. All it means that my savings are even greater than the great savings I've already quantified.
Some advice:
* Don't be afraid to try different brands and models. Everyone's perception of color is different. What is acceptable to one person may not be good for another. We're talking aesthetics, and there's no universality when talking about personal taste.
* Don't compare LED bulbs side-by-side with incandescent or halogen bulbs. No one likes change. I don't like change. You don't like change. If you compare the two side-by-side, you will prefer the bulb you've already been using. It's human nature. To switch, pull all the old bulbs, put in the new ones, give yourself 2-3 days to acclimate. If you STILL don't like it, then try a different bulb. On my aquariums, when I switched from THO flourescent lights to LEDs, it was hate at first sight. A week later, my tanks looked fantastic. All I needed was an acclimation period.
* Don't shop solely based on price. With LEDs, quality costs. Lucky for everyone, the cost of quality has gone dramatically down. The cost of shit has also gone down, so don't shop solely based on price.
* If you've got the funds, consider networked lights. There is some really cool shit being made, like the Phillips Hue, Lifx, Belkin's WeMo, and more are arriving seemingly by the day. Kickstarter is full of really cool projects, like this one that pairs an LED bulb with a bluetooth speaker.
I've definitely been lusting after some of these, but they're expensive, and so far most aren't fully compatible with traditional wall switches. I don't understand why anyone would want to control their lights with their smartphone, no matter how cool the lights might be. There's no way I can justify the cost from a savings perspective, and I already have most of my lighting connected to my home automation via smart dimmer switches. So for now, I'm happy with what I have. But if I was starting fresh and could afford it, I would definitely consider some of these options, particularly as they mature and offer the inevitable wall-switch controllers. For me, the payoff date would be around 4-5 years instead of two, but I'm willing to pay a premium for "cool" (slots into rule #3). I just can't pay a premium for only cool.
* Watch for buzz and flicker. One challenge of converting to LEDs is that some dimmer switch-bulb combinations aren't compatible. Most old-style switches require a certain level of wattage or they begin to buzz and/or flicker, and of course LEDs have extremely low draws. The lights I chose don't have those problems, but my house was completely renovated before we moved in and has relatively new wiring. So when testing bulbs, make sure you watch for flickering and listen to buzz. This article has a lot of great information on the topic. OLEDs One more thing on indoor lights—LEDs, light CFLs before them, might also turn out to be transitional technology, because OLEDs (organic light-emitting diodes) are just around the corner. These are thin sheets of electroluminescent material, currently used mostly on smartphone screens. OLED has promised to be the next big TV technology for years, but poor manufacturing yield rates have held it back. Only this year has LG introduced an OLED TV that isn't obscenely priced (yet still very expensive). But OLED will eventually allow cool-ass shit like this:
What makes OLED so interesting for TV is that it requires no backlighting—the LED crystals themselves emit light. Thus, TVs can be a single panel thin, rather than the many layers of current TV technology (backlight, LED crystals, front glass). But there is a far simpler application for the very same technology: lights!
With OLED, lighting is no longer restricted to familiar bulb form factors. Fixtures can be molded to any shape. So you start with this:
And then you mold it to whatever shape you want, so as you might imagine, the architectural and design applications are practically endless, like this:
Or this:
It could even be woven into fabric, like this:
And believe it or not, the technology promises to be even more energy efficient than LED. Maybe then I can justify upgrading to the future Phillips Hue OLED line! Now OLED shouldn't be an excuse to hold off on upgrading, lights like these at competitive prices are still 3-5 years away (if not longer, this is seriously bleeding edge technology), well beyond the point where upgrading today will pay for itself. So that takes care of indoor lights. Phew!
OUTDOOR LIGHTS
My outdoor lights setup was three lights on the entry way, with regular A19 bulb sockets, and four security floodlights, two of which stopped working years ago. These used bright halogens, which of course were electricity hogs. However, they are on so little (just when a cat or raccoon decide to visit) that it wasn't their "on" state that concerned me. We'll talk about standby power tomorrow, but as I crunched the numbers, I was sitting on about 100 watts of continuous electrical draw that I couldn't identify. I suspected those security flood lights were part of that mystery tally. I couldn't measure their draw with a watt meter, since they are hardwired rather than plug-ins. But their motion sensor had to draw power. And poor electronics can also suck vampire power. (I have a toaster oven that would use 4 watts of continuous power if I let it.) And since they were pretty much the cheapest security lights I could find at the time, I suspected efficiency wasn't at the top of the manufacturer's priorities.
When I took the old lights down, my fears were confirmed. The lights' housing was warm to the touch, evidence that they'd been drawing a significant chunk of standby power. It felt good to cap those live wires and tuck them away, now unused. So as I considered my options, I took a look at LED replacements. But again, the problem wasn't the "on" state of those lights, it was the continuous draw that concerned me. Saving watts on the 30 minutes a day they were on would never pay for itself or make an appreciable dent in my overall usage. And as much as I tried, I could find no manufacturer that would list their products' standby power (something which should be mandated by law for all electricity-using devices). I simply assumed that no one had bothered to work on standby efficiency.
Then I started seeing solar-powered outdoor lights, and a light bulb went off. What if I could essentially unplug ALL outdoor lights, and have them powered by the sun? And the results?
Solar security floodlights
This category was just terrible. Floodlights require massive amounts of output, and the sensors draw continuous power even when not on. So the bulk of the solar-powered flood lights I tried were too dim, cast the ugliest, coldest LED white possible, and were cheaply made. Furthermore, their performance was severely compromised by the short days and heavy cloud cover of this time of the year, so they'd be dead by 9 or 10 PM. Discouraging. I must've gone through six or seven before I found my solution. It was this:
The catch is this: there is no sensor. The light is on all night. At 3000K, it casts a nice warm amber glow, its 240 lumens are about the equivalent of a 40w incandescent. That's not bright, by any means, but it eliminates shadows, and that's what security lighting is all about, isn't it? I did that "agonizing" thing over whether the lack of motion sensor made sense. But here's the thing—backyard security lighting is designed to discourage thieves or vandals from skulking in dark areas of the yard. With these lights, someone with malicious intent would immediately see a lit yard and ideally target more inviting fare elsewhere.
I liked this light so much that I bought two more to provide greater coverage for my full yard. Note that while under normal sunny conditions, even in winter-shortened days, these last pretty much the whole night. But after 3-4 days of overcast rainy skies, run-time will suffer. I've had them go off at around 11 PM worst case. As for the financial calculation, I have no way to measure wattage draw from hard-wired devices. In my searches I did find an Australian study that found that security lights drew anywhere from three to nine watts of standby power. Mine felt warmer than three watts, but less than nine (yes, I've developed a feel for this), so I'll guess five (close enough). That would be 120 watts per day, or 43.8 kWh per year. EACH, because even my non-working ones were warm to the touch. That means that each one was costing me $8.32 to run per year, or $33.29 for the four. I replaced those four with the three solar floodlights, at $75 a pop, or $225. That puts my payoff time at nearly seven years. And I must admit, given the build quality of these, I'd be shocked if they last half that long.
So I assume this will fail Rule #2, but I do like the idea of continuous light (Rule #3), and reducing my consumption by 175 kWh per year certainly is a big gain for Rule #1.
Driveway Lights
To get to my front door, you walk up my driveway about 30 feet. I've always lit that path brightly, both for the security of my family as they come home, but also to give pedestrians some light as they walk to and from the nearby BART (subway) station. The area has had occasional muggings, but they've always happened in the darker corners of the block, never in front of my house. I'd been using three LED A19 bulbs like the ones in my bedroom, at 7 watts each, so 21 watts continuous for about 10 hours a night (longer in the winter, shorter in the summer). At 210 watts a night, that meant 76.7 kWh per year, or $14.56.
So could I come up with an alternative that would make sense financially? Tough at that price, but 76.7 kWh is about 1.3 percent of my annual usage, so removing that draw would certainly get me closer to zero carbon (Rule #1). And in any case, 76.7 kWh is 6-7 days of usage at my house, so getting rid of that would be like getting almost a week of free electricity. See? Rationalizing this stuff is fun! In any case, bottom line is that I never did find a suitable replacement for my previous LED bulbs. Everything is either too dim or the color temperature is too ugly and cold. But rather than replace, I did try something new. I went with these guys:
The housing is an ugly cheap white plastic, and they only have 3 watts of light each. But the 10-pack was $58 (4-year break-even, if they last that long, which they won't), so not a total financial loss. Thing is, the path is no longer brightly illuminated. Rather, these lights create an ambient glow that lights the way to my front door, but does little to light the sidewalk in front of the house. They attach to the gutter. In the daytime, they are kinda ugly. At night, though, they look pretty cool:
I really like the look. Hopefully, no one gets mugged in front of my house.
Christmas Lights
See the other lights in the picture? The one on the door is plugged in (LED, 6w, color changing), and will come off after the holidays. But the rest of those Christmas lights are all solar. Believe it or not, I bought six different sets and tested them out for weeks before I put them up over the Thanksgiving holidays. And really, they all kinda suck. They're about half as bright as regular Christmas lights, don't survive long during extended cloud cover (last maybe 3-4 hours a night after cloudy days), and while mine have held up okay, online reviews complain about poor reliability. So if you're looking for Christmas lights, I'd wait for these solar-version ones to improve.
On the other hand, if you're still using incandescent bulbs? A 100-bulb string of incandescent bulbs runs at around 40 watts. The same string with LEDs runs at just under four watts, and is just as bright and nice-looking. Better, actually, since the bulbs fail less than old-school bulbs. If you run that string for 10 hours a night, for the whole month of December, you're talking 12.4 kWh, our $2.36 with California rates ($0.19/kWh). That LED string will cost $0.23. Multiply that by the number of light strings you use, and your own rate, and the numbers add up pretty quickly. I bought a bunch of regular Philips-brand LED lights at Target (for the Christmas tree) for just under $7/string ($10 per string, buy two, get one free, plus $10 gift card if spending more than $50). You can get them even cheaper on Amazon.
CONCLUSION
Transitioning to LEDs are an obvious and good first place to begin an energy efficiency project in your home. The quality of LED lights now matches (or even surpasses, in the case of colored lights) the quality of incandescent lights, and the energy savings can be downright dramatic. Payoff times depends a great deal on the wattage and amount of time each bulb is used, but that calculation can allow you to pinpoint your greatest bang-for-the-buck savings as you work through your house. And if you're a tech geek, the network capabilities of many new LEDs open up huge customization and automation possibilities. And as a bonus, you don't have to worry about spending time swapping out bulbs every year. There will be a few no-brainer conservation options throughout this series, and this is certainly one of them. And if you've waited this long to begin, you get to benefit from plummeting bulb prices. So if you haven't done so already, there's no better time to start than now.