CFLs (Compact Fluorescent Lights)

We have our electric and gas bill equalized over 12 months, which makes it easy on the monthly budget. Unfortunately the recent electric bill adjustment jumped our monthly electric payment from under $120 to $170. To put it mildly, this shocked me, and quite honestly pissed me off. So to help reduce our electric bill I am quickly moving many of the major lights to CFLs.

The lights that I began replacing with CFLs were the ones that the kids typically leave on for long periods of time. I replaced most of the bathroom lights (which get left on a lot) with CFLs first. Not only are these left on a lot, but they are also a lot of lights--in four bathrooms there are 22, 60 watt lights for a total of 1320 watts in use when all are burning. Of the 22 bulbs, all but 4 were converted to 13-15 watt CFLs. This change reduces the watts used by nearly 900 watts. All of the kids rooms have been converted to CFLs as well as all the main bulbs down in the basement. In all I have replaced about 41 incandescent bulbs with CFLs.

So am I happy with them?

For the most part yes. Each of the bulbs uses less energy, but puts out more actual light. The light output as well as the energy savings makes me very happy, particularly since the lumen output of a 40 watt CFL is similar to a standard incandescent 60 watt bulb, so in some cases where I had multiple lights per room (such as the bathrooms) I replace some 60 watt bulbs with CFLs thus saving a few extra watts.

I am not happy with the length of time the lights take to completely warm up and reach their full lumen output. Some of the lights also have a slight delay before the lights even put out any light. Those two are the major frustrations. The starkness of the light is a slight irritation to me, but not to Jen. She is mostly frustrated with the two main issues noted above, which is why one of our main bathrooms is a mix of CFLs and incandescent--well those two reasons and price. The spiral CFLs are relatively inexpensive--about the same cost as the halogena lights that I really like. Globe lights, that we have in the kids bathroom, are over $4 a light bulb--nearly 3 times the cost of an incandescent. All the literature (well packaging really) says that we will save money over the life of the bulb. I guess I'll find out.