Amateur Climate Change

LED lamps from wikipedia

Today I have bought some led bulbs for my house, I have needed some time really to check the different connectors and chose the correct letters and numbers but finally I hope to have bought the correct ones by internet. At home we changed most of our incandescent bulbs many years ago by fluorescent ones, except some that due to the connector were impossible to find.  And some fluorescent bulbs were deceptive because they did not last long but many other are long-lasting and I do not intend to change them before they die out.

So, this substitution operation was only partial, some of the last no-fluorescent-no-leds and some missing gaps. But the most interesting part is a back-of-the-envelope figure I made to calculate the electrical consumption with any of the options. The calculation procedure was simple: for each room of the house count the number of bulbs and the required power with any of the options and then estimate the number of light hours daily. The difference was greater than I expected:

1. 62 KWh per month with incandescent bulbs
2. 26 KWh per month with fluorescent bulbs
3. 7 KWh per month with led bulbs

I got even happier after the estimation. I was surprised by the difference because hour energy consumption per month is not more than 150 KWh and we are more or less in the second stage. But was it economical? I am convinced so, even more, if not something would be really wrong in our economy.

The nice thing is that this shows we have the technology to reduce our energy consumption and emissions in just a click of the mouse, efficiency is possible and will be the most important source of energy in the first world if everything goes right because it is needed and not so difficult in some cases. By the way, I still have a lot of bulbs to change in the future to reduce my emissions.