Myths: Turning off lights to save power.

[guest22972]

This one has always made me laugh, turning off lights because they use power and send the bill up.
Even in the good old days when I was a kid, my grandmother would get real annoyed if you left a light on in a room you weren't in.  At 15 years old I was pointing out the amount of power her 2 bar radiator she sat over all winter used in comparison to the incandescent light bulbs she was so fanatical about.
It fell on deaf ears.

Maybe it rubbed off a bit on me after all because I have always been the same with leaving lights on even though I realise the real insignificance of them in the over all power use of a modern home.  When we came here I replaced a lot of the old bulbs with the CFC things my wife bought. Some were OK, some were crap.  They were a lot lower in power use and that was getting to me the way my daughter thinks a light switch only works one way.... ON!

I have turned around now with my lighting anxiety and am now turning them on just for effect.

Couple of weeks ago Mrs and I went out and bought a heap of new Decorative light fittings. Some of the ones that were here must have been brought from another house because this place wasn't near around in the '70s which was the era of some of the fixtures.
I got up in the roof and installed the new Fittings and moved some around to better locations.  We got a really great antique looking double shade piece that I centered over the dining room table rather than in the centre of the room.  Looks awesome. Wiring in the roof wasn't too my liking, typical get it done to the min standard to pass requirements and on to the next job so I fixed a lot of that to my satisfaction while I was up there.

By sheer luck, I went to the hardware for some globes and they are having their EOFY clearances. On a big mobile rack up the back were a load of Light globes. Just what I freaking wanted when I wanted it, for once.
They were all pretty much LED except for a couple of the very old yellow decorative filament style I grabbed a couple of for some lamps we got.  At 25W they are low powered by the old standards but like grans old radiator in comparison to the new ones.

I got a bunch of normal looking LED bulbs. They LOOK like lightbulbs, not Giant glow worms that had an epeliptic fit and contorted themselves into a grotesque shape that can't be installed in a lot of regular fittings.
They are 4W. I thought these aren't going to do much but will be OK for a few things.
Put them in and stuff me! these things are Bright and throw a heap of Illumination out! I went round and replaced some CFC's and incandescent and it was a great improvement in the quality of light aside from the power reduction.   I got these huge round style Bulbs which are LED for over the table and they look awesome. Very authentic and period.
Lucky there is a dimmer for them because they need to be turned down for effect as they are too bright at full tilt.

I as so impressed with all these globes I went back and bought a Heap of them in different sizes and shades as well as styles. The prices were giveaway cheap so I stocked up while the going was good which is kinda ironic as with the life of these things, they will probably well outlast me!
The comparison of consumption to the old globes is amazing.
There were a bunch of spotlights on the back verandah. Horrid stark things that used these halogen Pin base globes.  I replaced them with some Coachlight fittings I bought which look so much better and go with the style of the house as well as throwing a much more appropriate specularity of light.
The old Fittings were all double's with 2x 50W globes ea, 300W in total.  I put the coach lights up and threw in the LED bulbs without thinking much about them.

Tried them that Night and thought geez, might have to put a dimmer in here, these things are bright and I used the low power ones I got.  Had a look at them and they draw 6W ea! 18W in 3 Fittings from 300W and I gaurantee the light output is higher!
That was just the start.  Went and did all the lights along the driveway and across the front. Did the coachlights on the front verandah as well. Each light had a 60W bulb. Replaced them with 3.5W bulbs and the things are Brighter still.  The muther of a tree out the front had spotlights under it, 3x100W ea.
Replaced them with some 10W outdoor floods I bought a while back on fleabay and the old tree is brighter than ever.

The front was up around a Kilowatt with everything on, now it's well under 100W and brighter than ever. Already had a compliment from the neighbour across the road how good it all looks.
I put the lights on now for when the Mrs comes home. She loves to see the place lit up after a day at the kindergar... office and it's just a little thing that makes her feel content.  I used to hate putting them all on even though I knew they were using nothing relatively, old ingrained habits I guess, but Now I put them on front and back to show off.  Neighbors probably think we are rich running all these lights but I literally would spend a fraction on them ( even without solar) that I spend on boiling the kettle every day. I might look at putting them on My Christmas light type Timer I built.
Turns on at dusk, runs for 4 or however many hours I program it then switches off.

The biggest light in the house now is a 35W CFC here in the office that I use for colour balancing but it's really a shit light for everything else. When I was at the hardware they had these Solar/ rechargeable LED work lights going cheap. bought one and brought it home and it's a ripper. Went back to get a half dozen but they were all gone.  I am actually using that light atm for balancing and it's far better than the other CFC. I think it only has a single 18650 battery but I'll pull it apart and see if I can't put in a few more in parallel. It runs 6 hours on one panel and 3 with both. Solar charge component as usual is a joke, Supposed to take 18 hours of sunlight to fully recharge. I have a small 12V panel I'll put a plug onto and at 10W should charge the thing even with more batteries in a far more timely manner.

I do have a 100W LED flood for out the back that lights up the whole half acre of back yard and a couple of smaller 50W floods on sensors in front of the shed and along the back path.
The only incandescent I haven't changed are some GU10's on the other side of the back verandah.  There are a dozen of them in light bar like fittings. I couldn't find anything cheaper in LED to replace them than $5ea so they can stay. Only be used when we are out there occasionally for BBQ's etc and now with the others, won't be much need to use them at all. Cost me about 100X more to replace them than they will burn in power in the next 20 years anyway. I Might swap them out for LED Floodlights I have and point them up into the roof for a better ambient light.

I always think of my grandmother with LED Torches/ flashlights. She had this old torch that ran on a couple of D size Cells that was good for about 10 Min before it went dim.  With her Nightly visits to the outhouse, that 10 min came round fast.  I look at my collection of LED's now and the light they put out for hours and always think how amazed and happy she would have been to have one. the fact they are all on rechargeable batteries would be even more amazing to her. Probably would have complained about being too bright instead of too dim.

Would have never been able to make her understand that every light in the place running 24/7 would probably add about $2 a week to the power bill.
Of course gran would be 108 now, a lot of things would take a LOT of explaining to her.

I find Old Ideas take at least 30 years to fade away so I Imagine people will still be talking about turning lights off to save power for some time to come yet..... as they sit in front of their 75" Tv's or have them going just for the noise when doing other things around the house.

[LowGear]

I just couldn't do it.  The cost of having my monitor being on for the time it would take to read this entire novelette just doesn't pencil out to a worthy ROI.  But I did jump on ahead to the last two paragraphs and thought $24 a year is two nice lunches for just enrolling in a good habit.  Of course, living in a tar paper shack with one 60 watt bulb might cause this whole exchange to seem other worldly.  Yes, my family, had a couple of tight years when I was in high school.

I look on the management of energy to be a planet stewardship as much as saving a nickel. 

[broncodriver99]

I just couldn't do it.  The cost of having my monitor being on for the time it would take to read this entire novelette just doesn't pencil out to a worthy ROI.

Me either. I felt my eyes glazing over and my brain wandering to other things. 

[broncodriver99]

I don't believe it is a myth. It is much less of a savings method now(almost none) than it used to be as those that have switched over to CFL or LED know the usage is much much less.

Back when everyone was still using incandescent bulbs it could definitely save a few dollars a month depending on ones lighting habits. Ultimately though it was/is one of those practices that is driven by scale. If every household shut off one unneeded 60w bulb it adds up to a tremendous amount of energy nationwide. That is the point of the habit. You saving $0.24/ a month is not.

[guest23837]

A billion 100 watt light bulbs burning unneeded for 8 hours a day 365 days a year would use a considerable amount of oil or gas.

[BruceM]

There are some problems with LED and CFL lighting; they both use cheap switching power supplies to convert and regulate the voltage to the lamps. To make them cheap, tiny and not generate much heat they use very high frequency, hard switching 100K-1MHz. Because of this they generate a disproportionate amount of conducted EMI back on to the house wiring so that everyone in the home is exposed to it.  This is easily detected via an older AM radio- the type with loud hiss or static between stations. This is a stressor that will  both accelerate cancer growth and aggravate chronic health (immune mediated) health problems.  This problem is not inherent to LEDs; by having a single well designed regulated DC source distributed to all lighting, there is no need to have small switching supplies in every light.  One company that I'm aware of in the US promotes this for commercial/workplace lighting.  In short, we have come full circle and it is now time to go back to DC for home lighting distribution.

White LEDs and CFL's both illuminate via glowing phosphor's exited by UV. The character of the light is not a broad spectrum like daylight but there have been great improvements made in doping the phosphors to generate a smoother spectrum.   There are also issues with the source blue/UV light emissions affecting sleep since it fools your body chemistry (melatonin) into thinking it's day.  Presently all LED lights have a major UV/ blue spike in the spectrum; this is likely much of the spectrum problem for bio-compatibility  Same for LED and fluorescent back-lit computer/TV displays.

I think most of the problems of LED lighting COULD be fixed.  The UV could be blocked with appropriate coatings and/or polycarbonate. The use of other color LED's in addition to the mixed phosphor may be able to fill in the spectrum so that everyone might do well with LED lighting.  The power supply issue is readily fixable- though adds cost if the continued approach of supplying 120VAC or 230VAC to lighting is continued.

Meanwhile, I continue to use soft white incandescent lighting in my home and turn them off when I leave the room.  They are the pinnacle of bio-compatible (fire light spectrum), low emf lighting. 

[BruceM]

I felt the same way about EMFs as everyone else, even after my chemical injury and disability.  I didn't want to know about it.  I ended up paying a big price for my ignorance; some simple wiring errors in my home caused grossly elevated magnetic fields in the living room- 8 milligaus when the light were on.  I came down with a rapidly progressing case of MS which led to epilepsy.  When someone showed me an ELF meter and I tried avoiding very strong fields-  I did noticeably better, even though I was biased by my EE background to not believe such a thing could be possible.

The frustrating part of it for me now, is that everyone is just like me, and even though I explain that measuring and correcting these problems isn't that tough, and it is usually very cheap, there is tremendous resistance to learn about it.  I'm not sure why that is- but part of it is feeling overwhelmed, especially when you're health isn't great.

For me, EMF was a  HUGE issue for my neuro-degenerative disease...nothing like the kind of minor improvements I got from cleaning up my diet, water, air, etc.  I don't think I'm that special, but I also know that we are all different.  I think it is probably a significant contributor to many chronic illnesses, and hundreds of doctors from around the world have signed petitions saying just that.  It will be a LONG time before US medicine (a fully owned subsidiary of Big Pharma) catches up on it.  In fact, doctor's offices and hospitals are often some of the worst, very high EMF locations.  No wonder they are often stressed, irritable, and practice the lowest level of 8 minute medicine.

[mikenash]

Bruce & Casey are right-ish imho

I am unable to resist the lure of the scroll-down, myself

Bruce I wonder if folk's resistance to examining the effect the modern environment may have on health is simple "don't want to know"

Sort of parallel with your feelings on EMF issues I often wonder if the manipulated and highly-processed nature of the food we eat (specifically the modified starches perhaps) is a big single factor in health issues such as obesity and intolerances.  I suspect it might be, but also suspect a lot of folks just "don't want to know" maybe

Perhaps like Jondoh & his musical tastes I still listen to lots of '70s stuff and was recently showing a friend some Woodstock footage (yeah, I know it was '69).  Tens of thousands of young people standing around with their shirts off and all what we would call "skinny" these days.  Only a half-century ago

Just a thought

[BruceM]

I have no doubt that the typical American diet is a serious health assault. I can't eat that way myself and still be able to take care of myself.  I had to jettison wheat, grains, dairy, and legumes 30 years ago. I can occasionally eat them now but it's not worth the misery. Goat cheese every couple weeks is about it for me.  I've found in the last few years (annoyingly) that Gundry is right and other sources of food lectins also cause an increase in pain and increase in brain fog. That really sucks as I must avoid grain fed meats and nightshade family.  Avoiding glyphosate and pesticides in vegetables and trying to get preservative free, wild fish makes my grocery bill high but at least I'm still living independently, so it's a bargain, really.

[LowGear]

Casey have you ever thought of the ... Irony to put it nicely of coming to a place that is founded on the written word and then complaining all the time there are too many words for you to read?   

Thank you for putting it at the start of your three chapter novelette.  I think of this and other like used beasts to be more as central messaging points rather than creative writing classes. 

When your urine is freezing in the piss can before light of day the wood stove has a far higher value than the 60 watt bulb. 

Fridays are bought lunch day accompanied with a review of the greatness that the US is achieving under the majestic and intellectual giant Donald John Trump.  Oops, I start to digress.  This Friday is Pizza day and for $28.95 we, that's two of us (just a bit past $12 each) get half a pizza, a nice salad and iced tea on the Lanai overlooking Kealakekua Bay.  Next week is beef teri with iced tea for $14 each.  Now that's here in South Kona but in South Seattle I can go to many lunch style cafes and leave pleasantly filled for @10 - 12 every day if I choose.  Now this does screw with my OMAD program so perhaps over priced store food is part of the health program that will make us great and help the rest the world too once they see how we are progressing (I apologize for using the "P" word).  I have a friend that won't eat Thai here because he can get better in Thailand for about $1.50.

One Meal A Day.

[AdeV]

CFL's are the devil's work. Crap light, crap lifespan, crappity crap crap.

LEDs on the other hand, are The Future (unless they can get bioluminescence to rival the light output). I replaced 6x 50W halogen fittings in my kitchen with 6x 6w LEDs - totally identical fittings, brightened up my kitchen no end. Plus I get to choose "daylight white" instead of "pissy yellow" (the standard Halogen colour).

I've since replaced almost all of my old incandescents with LED equivalents; again, identical fittings, approx 1/10th the wattage (or less) and similar or better light output. I'm a total convert to LED lighting.

At some point, when I get around to redecorating the bedroom(*), I want to embed an LED strip into the wall to give it a real Star Trek feel. You can even buy fancy programmable ones these days which will put on their own lightshow. Give the Mrs the remote control & she can colour-coordinate the room with her mood 

(*) As soon as the hallway/stairwell is completed. Took the old wallpaper & wood down in 1998. Currently waiting to be re-instated. Maybe next year...

[AdeV]

When your urine is freezing in the piss can before light of day the wood stove has a far higher value than the 60 watt bulb. 

I'd take that as a sign I needed to live in a warmer country, rather than anything to do with wood stoves or lightbulbs...

[guest23837]

I still turn off lights when not needed. There are a few reasons I suppose and one is definitely about expense. You can but all sorts of bulbs here and incandescent bulbs are the cheapest. CFL and LED equivalents are between 6 and 10 times the price of them. People on low incomes which is really most people on the planet will go for the cheapest option. In  Ireland an LED bulb costs about €9.00 CFL about €6.00 and a traditional bulb about €1.00 this is Ireland so we have very expensive electricity, I'm on a rural tariff which is even more expensive so we tend to be careful. There's not much light in the hall so there is an occupancy sensor there. there are GU10 bulbs in the fascia boards I replaced three blown ones last year with LED's cost €25.00 for the 3 pack two if them have since died. Security lights are on PIR sensors again they have older halogen bulbs simply because they are way cheaper to replace. I agree with the OP that some low energy bulbs have a greenish tinge to the light it makes people look weird again why would you pay multiples of the price for bad light?
Living on a speck of land at the edge of Europe means you are at the end of a long supply chain so things are more expensive anyway. Diesel, Petrol Gas are very expensive paraffin is four times the price of kerosene so if you have a paraffin heater for emergencies a 4 liter can of paraffin costs €13-15. (I use kerosene anyway slight whiff when lighting it is a small price to pay)
So yes I will turn off lights in empty rooms because either way I am paying through the nose on a low income!

[AdeV]

LEDs have come way down in price in recent times. Check eBay for some really good deals.

GU10 LEDs can be a mixed bag. I bought 6 for the kitchen about 4 years ago, they're all still perfect. 2 years ago I bought another 6 (different make) for the bathroom, I've had to replace 4 of them so far (and one of the remaining 2 is now flickering on startup; I can't work out which one because it stops before I can identify it - but it'll go soon I'm sure).

[guest23837]

LEDs have come way down in price in recent times. Check eBay for some really good deals.

GU10 LEDs can be a mixed bag. I bought 6 for the kitchen about 4 years ago, they're all still perfect. 2 years ago I bought another 6 (different make) for the bathroom, I've had to replace 4 of them so far (and one of the remaining 2 is now flickering on startup; I can't work out which one because it stops before I can identify it - but it'll go soon I'm sure).

I look at stuff on ebay on a daily basis! Mostly I just get jealous or angry. eBay Ireland is really eBay UK so that's where most of the stuff you order comes from but here's the rub. Many UK sellers only post to the UK of those that post to Ireland the postage is really high. Apparently so many items coming from the UK to Ireland are "lost in the post" that they will only send registered post. Also people that send bulk mail in the UK have to pay a much higher rate to ship internationally to Ireland anyway even though we are within shelling range in many places. That makes many items even dearer than here so I have to sit and seethe ....