Energy Efficient Lighting Products

Studies indicate that lighting makes up approximately 20 percent of a typical U.S. household’s electricity bill. By simply replacing inefficient light bulbsfrom incandescent to fluorescent designs an average residential customer can reduce his or her electricity costs by $30 per  light bulb. In the case of new construction or major renovation/remodelling, installing fluorescent or LED light fixtures will provide additional savings in both electricity and cost.

Compact Fluorescent Light Bulbs (CFLs)

Compact Fluorescent Light Bulbs (CFLs) are improving rapidly fluorescent and they  now offer improved performance (advanced technology and better efficiency), variety (sizes, shapes and colors), and new operational features (e.g. compatible with dimmers and 3-way switches). Compared with incandescent light bulbs they offer a number of notable advantages, namely CFLs:

• Use only about 25 percent of the energy to provide an equivalent amount of light,
• Have significantly longer lifespans (approximately 10 times longer than the typical incandescent light), and
• Reduce cooling costs (the generate 75 percent less heat and thus do not add to a buildings space conditioning needs).

In switching to CFLs, it has been estimated that $1.5 billion of energy costs were saved in 2007 in the U.S. and the impact on environmental emissions was roughly the equivalent of removing 2 million cars of the road each year.

LED Light Fixtures

Fluorescent and the emerging technologies based on light emitting diode (LED) lighting fixtures require approximately 75 percent less energy than incandescent fixtures with equivalent lumen intensity. Although they are typically more expensive at first cost, they offer a number of long-term benefits:

• Reduced total costs over the life of the fixture because energy bills are much lower and bulbs last longer, and
• Light is distributed more efficiently and evenly, and
• Less heat output than incandescent fixtures.