Green Guide: Spotlight on Green Lights
04 Mar 2010
If there’s one bulb that goes off in your head, it should be green. Energy-efficient lighting is a relatively quick way to reduce energy consumption, green your home and save cash in the long term.
Edison’s light bulb was a techno-miracle of metal, glass and gas that revolutionized our lives. But in today’s energy-conscientious world, that miracle bulb is a techno-nightmare, because the majority of its energy consumption goes to producing heat, not light.
On average, lighting consumes 15 percent of the electricity in a typical American household. So if we all converted to energy-efficient lighting, it would save energy in the short term and cash in the long term. Each energy-efficient lighting technology “has its benefits,” says Bryan Alu, president of Polar-Ray.com, a Web-based LED lighting retailer headquartered in Boulder. But the best lighting schemes will involve several technologies appropriate for the space and task, he says.
Green lighting technology is moving ahead at lightning speed. Here are current options, along with the pros and cons of each:
Compact Fluorescents (CFLs)
Pros: Squiggly CFLs are de rigueur these days. Far more efficient than incandescent bulbs, CFLs use only 20 percent of their energy to produce the equivalent amount of light, and they emit far less heat. They’re also longer-lived, about 10 times longer than an incandescent bulb, and can screw into existing fixtures. Purchase prices continue to drop, and rebates from Xcel Energy bring prices down even further. An Energy-Star-qualified CFL will save about $30 over its lifetime and pay for itself in about six months. When savings over time are calculated, CFLs are a winner, both energetically and economically. Cons: CFLs have lousy “Color Rendering Index” (CRI), which refers to “how ‘true’ a light makes objects appear,” Alu says. The CRI of sunlight, for example, is 100; halogens are in the upper 90s; and LEDs range from the low 80s to upper 90s. Common fluorescent bulbs at hardware stores “are down in the 70s,” Alu says, “which is why we all look gh
ostly under office lights.”
Some people may not notice this difference; others are quite sensitive to it. If you’re in the latter group, buy higher-priced CFLs, which have a CRI in the 90s. Two other cons: Nobody likes a CFL’s warm-up time—or the flicker—when it first is turned on. And because mercury is a component in every CFL, expired bulbs should be disposed of at the Boulder County Household Hazardous Waste Facility at 5880 Butte Mill Road, which “costs” convenience and time.
