Shining a light on the availability of energy efficiency

[brin_bellway]

[arguably cw: apocalypse]


(this has been percolating for a while, but the final impetus was maryellencarter mentioning that their (American) apartment came with incandescents)


I'm curious: how readily available are different kinds of lightbulb where you live (LED, incandescent, fluorescent, write-in answers), and how do their prices compare with each other? Particularly curious about answers from Americans.

I saw a post going around a while back that used "switching from incandescent to LED lightbulbs" as an example of an individual-level climate action that is nice but supererogatory and you shouldn't beat yourself up if you can't afford it, and I was like ???.

'Who...who can't afford LED lightbulbs?' I thought. 'Like, I get the general point about supererogation and bailing-a-boat-with-a-teaspoon and from-each-according-to-their-ability and all that, but *LED lightbulbs*? Is this some kind of, like, Extreme Vimes Boot Theory? You know LED bulbs cost about three bucks a pop and pay for themselves in 2 - 6 months from reduced electric bills, right? They...*do* cost ~three bucks a pop and pay for themselves within months where you live, right? Right??'

Comments

[brin_bellway]

Math:

Say electricity costs 8.2 cents/kWh (a worst-case scenario, in terms of how worthwhile LEDs are). Say an LED lightbulb costs $3.25 (again, a worst case: I'm using the full price even though they're on sale right now), while an incandescent costs...okay, apparently the reason I can only find weirdly-shaped niche incandescents in the store catalogue is because Canada banned the normal ones in 2015, and presumably I did not really notice because why would I buy incandescents in the Year of Our Lord 2015 anyway. Fuck it, let's say they're free: LEDs would *still* be worth it under that assumption.

An incandescent ~800-lumen bulb would require 60 watts. An LED 800-lumen bulb requires 8.5 watts. The savings is 51.5 watts, which can also be expressed as 0.0515 kilowatts, which in turn can be expressed as 0.0515 kWh/hour.

[0.0515 kWh/hour * 8.2 cents/kwH] = a savings of 0.4223 cents/hour. We need to save 325 cents' worth of electricity, which takes [325 cents / 0.4223 cents/hour] = ~770 hours of run-time. That's about 64 days at 12 hours/day, 128 days at 6 hours/day, 193 days at 4 hours/day.

That's *before* getting into the longer life expectancy of LEDs.

[thedarlingone]

This led me to go squint at my electric bill again, but I still can't figure out my actual cost per kilowatt-hour. I appear to pay a $10 base fee for the privilege of having electricity, $10.18 per kilowatt for the first seven "on-peak" kilowatts (of which I appear to be charged for 1.64 kW this month), about 4 cents per kilowatt-hour "delivery charge" (I have 236 kilowatt-hours on this bill), a separate "Power Supply Charge - Winter" of about 3 cents per kilowatt-hour, a $3 "Renewable Energy Standard Tariff", and then a bunch of dribs and drabs like sales tax and City Franchise Fee and State Transportation Authority Tax. Total bill for April, $55.

(I have not been much exercised about reducing my power bill since becoming work at home, because I have to have plenty of light and obviously be running my workstation, on-peak hours or not.)

On the other hand, I was able to pick up a four-pack of LED "daylight" bulbs at Walmart for $6, 100-watt equivalent (uses 14 watts), non-dimmable. If I was willing to go for 60-watt equivalent (uses 9 watts) and "soft white", I could get a 4-pack for $5. Individually, these would run $3 for the 9-watt or $5 for the 14-watt, but who buys a single lightbulb?

*checks your link to make sure you were quoting the divided price for a 4-pack in case Canada specializes in supplying single lightbulbs*

I guess if I divide this month's total bill by this month's kilowatt-hours, it comes out to something like 23 cents per kilowatt-hour, but that definitely doesn't scale. I'm deeply unsure how the on-peak kilowatts relate to the kilowatt-hours, too...

[brin_bellway]

>>If I was willing to go for 60-watt equivalent (uses 9 watts) and "soft white", I could get a 4-pack for $5.

Nice. American dollars are larger than Canadian dollars, but that's still a lot cheaper. Maybe I'll pick up a pack or two of lightbulbs next time I'm in New York.

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>>I have to have plenty of light and obviously be running my workstation, on-peak hours or not.

Because of the big rise in work-from-home, Ontario recently instituted a policy where households can choose between time-of-use billing and tiered billing (X cents/kWh for the first Y kWh each month, Z cents/kWh thereafter).

When I heard that, I got out the electric bills from 2020. I did the math, and we'd have saved about $40 if we'd been on tiered pricing for 2020 (well, 2020 usage but current rates, in an effort to model the future), despite our best efforts at load-shifting.

But I kind of like that our incentives are aligned with the people trying not to have to fire up the backup natural-gas-powered plants (base load is mostly hydro and some nuclear around here, pretty low-carbon), and I expect more load-shifting opportunities in the future as we (probably) electrify our heating and dryer and maybe even our car. I'm thinking I won't bring tiered pricing up with my family.