Thursday, November 22, 2007

Compact Fluorescent Floodlights

I hadn't seen compact fluorescent floodlights until recently, but Lowe's offers two indoor/outdoor 18 Watt Replacement Bulbs for $3.50.

It's a pretty good deal to replace two 75 watt incandescent lights with these CFL's that have a nominal life of 6000 hours (about 5 to 7 times that of an incandescent) and use 1/4 the electricity that the incandescents use. Assuming these two CFL's are on for 6 hours a day you will save about $18 per year in electricity costs compared to two 75 watt incandescents.

I recently replaced two indoor 65 watt incandescent flood lights with two 15 watt CFL's (the main difference between these and the typical spiral type CFL's is that they take awhile to reach their peak brightness...but that's fine with me considering the energy savings).

In Snohomish County the common spiral type CFL's are $1.99 or less at Bartell's, Walgreens and some local hardware stores with coupons (usually available in the store) from the Snohomish County PUD

Like most people we are gradually replacing all the incandescent lamps we can in our household with the more energy efficient compact fluorescent lamps