Did you know that for the typical US household the largest single contributor to the electricity bill is lighting? Or that on a room by room basis the worst offender is the kitchen?


With energy prices set to continue rising until someone figures out a viable alternative to oil, the most effective way to stop burning money then (other than living in the dark) is to get clued up about why traditional incandescent lights are so expensive to run and how low energy lighting can help.

Mr. Edison's wonderful invention, the incandescent light bulb, works sort of by accident. It's actually a small heating element that happens to glow rather more brightly than those in say a 2 bar electric heater; but it still turns electricity into over 90% heat and less than 10% light. And that's why it's such a colossal waste of energy (and money) - because you need 10 times more electricity than is strictly necessary.

The alternatives, in ascending order or merit, are as follows.

The new breed of energy saving halogen lamps. These can be either in the form of regular halogen spotlights or shaped to look like regular incandescent bulbs. They are in fact a form of incandescent light bulb but can be up to 2 times more efficient and produce light that looks closest to that from conventional incandescents.

Compact Fluorescent Lamps (CFLs) which are, as the name suggests, scaled down fluorescent tubes. These are usually about 4 times more energy saving, but there are quite a few downsides. They can take a while to "warm up", look rather ugly and stick out, deliver inferior light quality, and like all fluorescents they contain mercury which means there's a big disposal issue associated with them.

Last up we have Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs) which use electrical energy to excite electrons which in turn emit photons (i.e. light). As it happens, the photons are not in the visible spectrum and so a phosphor coating is used which glows as it absorbs photons and thus also determines the visible color. But despite this slight degree of indirection, LEDs convert over 90% of the input electricity into light.

Since LED lights are about 10 times more efficient than traditional incandescent light bulbs they require only 1/10th of the electricity which also means a corresponding reduction in your electricity bill. So where's the best place to start fitting them?

The kitchen of course; not only because it will save the most money but because modern LED kitchen lighting also looks pretty smart too. Just don't necessarily expect to replace an overhead light bulb or two and get away with it though; LED lights in a kitchen look terrific but they do need to be used differently in order to get the best effects.