Also read the following articles on how you can use less electricity:

 

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  • Slaying energy vampires (We identify your home's energy vampires and how you can save expensive electricity...)

     

  • Bright as a button (Learn how you can stay bright without gobbling up more precious electricity than necessary.)

     

  • Keep it fresh for less (If spiralling electricity costs make you hot under the collar, follow these tips to use less electricity when refrigerating.)

     

  • Heat water, not the sky! (Water heating accounts for 40 percent of household energy use. Here's how you can save...)

     

  • Efficiency myths, busted! (Kabous le Roux debunks 20 patently wrong, yet widely held electricity saving myths...)

     

  • Stay warm for less (How to save electricity (i.e. money!) when warming up this winter...)

It has been a bitterly cold winter. The temperatures have regularly been on the wrong side of freezing and the sun has generally set by the time I leave the office. The result is that when I get home in the evenings, the first thing I do is switch on every light and heater available, switch on the electric blanket and start cooking a nice warm meal on the stove.

With all these appliances and lights burning, it got me thinking about the importance of using energy efficient appliances and lighting. I hope to unpack the latter in this article.

A "normal light bulb" is also known as an incandescent light bulb. These are the bulbs that we all grew up with that have a very thin filament inside a glass sphere. They typically come in sizes like "60 watt," "75 watt" and so on.

The basic idea behind these industrial-age bulbs is simple. Electricity runs through the filament and because the filament is so thin it offers resistance to the electricity. This resistance turns electrical energy into heat. There is enough heat to make the filament white-hot and white-hot equals light.

The problem with incandescent light bulbs is that the heat wastes a lot of electricity. Heat is not light, and the purpose of the light bulb is to produce light, so all of the energy spent creating heat is wasted. As a result, incandescent bulbs are very inefficient.

But there is an alternative!

Thanks to the compact fluorescent bulb, lighting has been one of the great success stories in energy efficiency in the last decade. Like the fluorescent lamps found in commercial buildings, a compact fluorescent bulb is a tube. However, the residential versions are narrower and twisted around like a koeksister.

Below is a comparison of typical compact fluorescent bulbs and the equivalent incandescent bulbs used to produce the same amount of light:

 

  • 7 watts = 25 watts

     

  • 15 watts = 60 watts

     

  • 18 watts = 75 watts

     

  • 27 watts = 100 watts

     

  • 32 watts = 150 watts

     

Article continues on page two: how energy efficient bulbs work and their drawbacks...