It’s a hot topic of the day, should I go ahead and replace all my house lights with CFLs?  How much money will I have to spend upfront?  How much energy will I save a month?

Basically, is it worth doing?

This question is individual for every household.  Some households spend a lot of energy on lighting and some don’t.

Here is an example based on my home.  I estimated my monthly energy savings if I were to replace my incandescent bulbs with the CFL bulbs.  I’m not counting the existing fluorescent lights we use in the kitchen, since I’m not planning to replace them.

Here is what I did:

1. I checked out what wattage bulbs we use in our light fixtures throughout the house.
2. I estimated how many hours per week each light fixture is ON.
3. I used this conversion chart taken from www.energystar.gov to find what substitute CFL light bulbs I need.
   
4. I calculated how much money I would save on my monthly energy bill by replacing incandescent lights with the CFL lights.  Here are my findings:

You can create the same chart either by hand or by using my spreadsheet to estimate your savings.

Once you find out your energy savings, you can check out how much it would cost to replace the incandescent lights.  Walmart.com and lowes.com have large selections of CFL light bulbs.  I estimated that I would have to spend about $70 to replace all of my bulbs to CFLs.  I’m sure as the time passes they will get less expensive.

One thing to keep in mind is that CFL lights last longer than the incandescent lights.  It’s a definite saving!  I love this table I found, it summarizes all the important attributes of LED, incandescent and CFL lights.