[quote=FlyerInHi]
I know people who still run at least 6 100w incandescent lights in their kitchen. Imagine all the heat that generates. I run my whole apartment on much less and I have all the lights on.[/quote]
Imagine the additional AC load due to those bulbs in the summer.. Using energy to get rid of the waste energy from inefficient bulbs that use more energy than needed to light the place. Take that a step further, using energy running the AC to get rid of energy that is falling on the roof and turning into heat, heating the house.
I have been doing the replacement ‘piecemeal’. As a bulb dies it gets replaced with a ‘new’ type. All but 1 reflector flood in the kitchen and 1 reflector flood in the high ceiling area near the stairs are Compact Florescent. Those were the only two tungsten floods (as of last year). I left those as tungsten for safety – so I would get a usable amount of light as soon as the light switch goes on, while waiting for the CFs to brighten. The last two have recently been replaced by LED reflector floods (the tungsten bulbs died), and as CFs die, the plan is to replace those as well with LED. My estimate on diffs of light efficiency comes in at about; CFs 5x more light efficient than tungsten/incandescent, LEDs are about 2x CFs or about 10x tungsten/incandescent. This is not including how long they last. The CFs are hard to estimate over tungsten because of the variance. Some of mine died surprisingly fast, others seem to have a life of about 3x the tungsten. Not enough data for the LEDs yet.
I figure the progressive ‘roll-in’ is probably the most cost effective and least wasteful way to do the change over. Each new bulb is the most ‘modern’ and most efficient available at that time, and I avoid new tech ‘glitches’ on designs. The energy consumption in the house has gone way down – not that the SDG&E total $ bill reflects that. The last bill kind of pissed me off.
The biggest difficulty has been in matching the color temperature between the incandescent, CF and LED bulbs.
