Every year, millions of Americans spend decent share of their hard-earned money on electricity, as a matter of fact, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, in 2017 Americans spent on average an estimated $1,400.00 ($111.67 per month to be more exact) just on electric bills. What if I told you there was a very simple way to save yourself some money on the long haul or better adjust your electricity spending into your budget? This very simple task can be accomplished just by paying attention to what type of lightbulbs are present in your home.

As you can tell by the table above, LED light bulbs can emit the same number of lumens (how much light is produced by a source) as fluorescent and incandescent bulbs but consume considerably less watts. So, what does that mean in non-scientific terms? You can get the same brightness from a lightbulb but spend considerably less. Let’s take as example your average incandescent 60-watt lightbulb, if you were to leave this single light bulb turned on for one hour every day of every month for one year ((60W x 30 x 12)/1000) it would consume 21.6kW per year, now compare that to an equivalent single 6-watt LED bulb which only consumes 2.16kW per year ((6W x 30 12)/1000) in the same scenario and you could see how big the difference is, but what does that mean to your pocket? If you consider that as of January 2020 the average price of a kilowatt per hour in the United States is anything between $9.01 and $31.70, and we take a rate somewhat in the middle of that range at around $15, at this rate the 60W incandescent bulb which we discussed earlier would have cost you an estimated $37.5 that month, and if we compare that to the LED’s $3.75 cost on the same scenario you can start to see how cost efficient they can be.

Although LED light bulb are most of the time a few bucks more expensive than its counterparts, the money you are going to save on the long run will surely pay for those extra bucks spent on an LED light bulb.


Sources:


1. DIXON, Amanda. “How Much Is The Average Electric Bill?”. smartasset. Jul 09, 2019.

https://smartasset.com/personal-finance/how-much-is-the-average-electric-bill

2. “Electricity rates by state”. CHOOSE ENERGY. May 4, 2020.

https://www.chooseenergy.com/electricity-rates-by-state/

3. SEYMOUR. Kara Fitzpatrick. “Life Expectancy of Light Bulbs”. HomeSteady.

https://homesteady.com/12257790/life-expectancy-of-light-bulbs

4. MCBRIDE, Brandon. “Comparing LED vs CFL vs Incandescent Light Bulbs”. VIRIBRIGHT.

https://www.viribright.com/lumen-output-comparing-led-vs-cfl-vs-incandescent-wattage/