Light bulbs...(nothing to do with fishing whatsoever) - Striper Talk Striped Bass Fishing, Surfcasting, Boating

Vectorfisher · 01-20-2006, 09:42 PM

Jim I would hate to see your electric bill if you are figuring on saving $ 1000.00 a year, heck I think we only pay $ 1500.00 total a year

Slingah · 01-20-2006, 09:52 PM

thanks for the info sandman

UserRemoved1 · 02-01-2006, 05:55 PM

Hey Jim I just got the latest bill from National Grid. The average of the bills from the last two Decembers are 1100 kwh per month. This months bill was 880 kwh so I saved 220 kwh...granted yes the boiler hasn't been running as much because of the warm days but it's still a pretty significant savings. I saved $9.59 in the delivery charges and $23.58 in the generation charge for a total of $33.17 savings. Not bad for the first month!

Mr. Sandman · 02-02-2006, 10:39 AM

Salty,
Looking good. You are about a month ahead of me. I am just getting most of the lights switched over. As of 2/1 I had about 60% of the lights moved to CFL's of some sort. My goal is to have 90-95% cfl by 3/1. There are some lights I just cant change. There are some small halogens spots that I can't replace (yet) and a few that I would like to keep as IC.

The amount of floods I have on dimmers is insane and these are all getting replaced. Also, I have some several fixtures in the kitchen that are tightly closed around the IC bulb. These get hot as hell and if you put the maximum wattage bulb in there as suggest on the fixture, the wires will melt. (they have and I got a free replacement fixture). I have an order for a bunch of "cold cathode" CLFs that are the exact size of a regular 60 watt bulb and produce 60 watts at 2700K and are dimmable...they use 5 watts! They are expensive (18 bucks each) and are hard to find. They last forever and are designed to go in a closed fixture like a sign.

I have so many bulbs being delivered to my house these days my wife thinks I am nuts. She told me "that is my birthday present for this year...all these light bulbs".

I have learned a lot by trial but made a few mistakes in trying out a few things that did not work out perfectly, some I will live with for a while until get a better bulb for that here-and-there spot where it is not working out as I would like, but overall I am getting use to the differences in lighting now and in by the end of march I should see a difference in my KWH usage. From then on out I plan to tweek the bulbs until I am satisified with the lighting in each area.

Below is a graph of my KWH usage for 2005. I plan to track it in 2006 (red dot) to see the difference. Clearly the AC last year was the biggest part. The year before I think it only kicked on for a few weeks, last year it was on a lot it seemed.
So far have only had a few bulbs in for the last couple days of the month so there is no improvement in my bill yet. I averge about 1400 KW without AC. My april bill should show something better. What I am anxious to see is if I can compute how much heat my AC was removing due to the bulbs alone...I have a plan to do this.

The cost of power here is (IMO) high compared to elsewhere in the country too. If you add up all the charges you get:

Supplier charges: .12919 cents/KWH
Delivery services: .04585+.02858+.00641+.00049+.0025=.0866for a total cost of $0.2185 KWH !!!! (You can get power in some parts of the country for 10 cents per KW)

What is your current total cost over there per KWH for supplier + deliver and all the other BS?

Anyway look foreward to seeing the savings.

UserRemoved1 · 02-02-2006, 10:55 AM

we're paying dist .02377, transistion .00862, transmission .00819, energy cons .00250, renewable energy .00050 and generation of .10718

Total cost .228/kwh

I may try and graph that too if I get some time, they give you the previous 13 months on the bill every month. My highest was july at 1706 that's with ac, lowest was April with 767.

We have been adjusting to the new stuff very nciely, everyone doesn't seem to have any problems with any of the stuff converted. I left the main bath upstairs undone and that has 240 watts in it. Wife wanted it bright so I left it. Did the downstairs bath and we both agree that the baths need to stay IC so I'm going to change it back. The rest seem pretty decent though and am very happy with the results. The bulbs will pay for themselves in savings over the next several months which I think is fantastic.

Steve K · 02-02-2006, 10:59 AM

Have you guys experienced any interference caused by the cfls? I have read that they can interfer with wireless devices like remote controls.

Mr. Sandman · 02-02-2006, 11:12 AM

Not yet but I can imagine if the blub is right next to a wireless device it might cause a problem. I found my cell phone produces interference...put your cell phone next to your FM radio and listen to the noise it makes.

The amount of UV radiation produced by FL lighting is so small it is not funny. I read a report a week ago that showed if you stayed in an office lit only by flour. lighting (and plenty of it) for all day (8 hours) the amount of radiation (UV) you would recieve is equal to 1 minute of being in the daylight in July. I think the ballast might produce some interfereence though with other electomagnetic and IR devices but it would have to be close I would think. It is not a big deal as far as I can tell.