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Yes. This is a conservative estimate of average savings. More money can be saved in states with expensive electricity.

For over 50 years businesses have been saving lots of money by lighting with fluorescent bulbs. At home, they were never popular because they made people and colors look funny, they hummed, they flickered, and you couldn't screw them in.

All of that has changed; now you can save almost as much as businesses do. Screw-in compact fluorescents are here. They are not quite as cheap per Watt as the big ugly ones that hum. But they are tiny, quiet, cool, and they last and last.

Q: What changes with the use of CFLs?

1. Reduced heating from CFLs in the winter.
2. The dimming of CFLs over their life.
3. The need to spend more up front.

Q: What are CFLs compared with?

They can be compared with normal (incandescent) GE Soft White bulbs with a life of 1000h and a cost of 50¢.

Q: How does reduced heating in winter reduce savings?

CFLs are cooler to the touch--they can't burn you. This is because the waste a lot less energy as heat. But in the winter, this heat allows your furnace to run a little less, and this saves you some money. Of course in the summer, it makes your air conditioner run more. The end result is that CFLs save less than it seems in winter and more in summer. A very conservative estimate is that CFLs give you a net 25% reduction in the dollar value of energy savings.

Q: How does dimming reduce savings?

CFL bulbs are normally compared on the basis of their inital "lumen" light output. But over their life, they dim a bit more than normal bulbs.

Q: How does the additional up-front cost reduce the savings?

The reality is that CFLs last a very long time. With short-life bulbs, you could delay part of your purchase and earn interest (15% is assumed) on your money. Of course, not having to shop and replace 10 incandescent bulbs is a big plus for CFLs.

Q: Do CFLs really last 10,000 hours?

Hundreds of CFL bulbs and in all but one test, they lived up to their rated hours. GE's 10,000 bulbs actually averaged 15,000. But these tests run them 3 hours on and 20 minutes off.

Q: What's this about gallons of gasoline?

Most of the energy saved will be from coal plants that produce electricity. All of the fossil energy saved (but not the nuclear or hydro) has been converted to an amount of gasoline with the same energy, just to make it more understandable.

Q: What's the bottom line?

Fluorescents save a lot of money and energy except when they are used very little or for just a few minutes (about 5 or less) at a time.

Tags: CFLs, Compact Fluorescent Lights, GE Soft White Bulbs, Incandescent, Watt