Flick the Switch: 5 Essential Facts About Turning Off Your Lights to Save Energy

Turning the lights off when you leave your room is necessary to help save electricity and lower your utility bills. As a homeowner, turning the lights off when you’re not using them can help save money by reducing your electricity bills, extend the life of your light bulbs, and buy bulbs less often.

Turning your lights off is essential when you go out of your room for a few minutes. Doing so can make your home more energy-efficient. Turning your lights off is also more energy efficient when you choose lighting options that are high-quality and cost-effective. On the other hand, check out these six essential facts about turning off the lights in your home.

Saving Depends on the Type of Bulbs You Use

Not all light bulbs in the market are created equally. The energy you can save by turning off the lights would depend on the type of bulbs you’re using. One of the least energy-efficient types of lighting is an incandescent light bulb. These lights tend to produce heat as their primary electrical conversion before they can generate light.

Ninety percent of incandescent light bulbs’ energy use is given off as heat while only ten percent results into lights. Therefore, turning off your incandescent light bulbs can help you save more energy in your home. Turning off halogen lights when not in use can also help reduce energy bill since they use the same technology as incandescent light bulbs.

You also need to follow the general rule of thumb when you turn off Compact Fluorescent Lights or CFLs. You can leave the lights on if you’ll return to your room within 15 minutes. But if you go out of your house for more than 15 minutes, then it’s more energy saving to turn them off. The strategy will also help extend the life of your CFL bulbs.

However, Light Emitting Diodes or LED bulbs will not be affected whether you turn them on or off. It’s one of the essential characteristics of LED bulbs that makes them ideal for your energy conservation at home. You can also utilize sensors that can help switch them on and off automatically and turn their full brightness instantly.

It Can Help Save Energy and Money

Turning your lights off can help save energy and money. You can calculate how much power you can save for each light bulb you switched off per hour. You need first to check the watt rating printed on each bulb. If you have a 60-watt bulb and you turned it off for one hour, then you can save .06 kilowatt hours.

You can also calculate how much money you can save on turning off your light bulbs. You need first to get your recent electric bill and check out how much per kilowatt hour you’re charged. Then, you have to multiply the amount of kilowatt per hour by its given price.

The number of changes with how much energy and money you save depends on the place where you live. It might also depend on the time of the day or the season in which you use your lights. If you have an electric rate of 20 cents per kilowatt-hour, then you can save about 1.2 cents when you turned off a light bulb per hour.

There’s a Snowball Effect

Turning the lights in your home can help save a significant amount of money per kilowatt hours and reduce your electricity bill every month. However, your savings would grow more rapidly when many people will do the same movement. One of the best examples is to have energy-saving and sustainability movements.

One of the energy-saving and sustainability movements is the Lights Off Cornell. As a project run by a committee of students from Cornell University, it’s a movement that aims to help conserve energy by turning off the unused lights inside the campus. It’s an energy conservation initiative that helps reduce wasted electricity and save money.

Cornell also helps encourage the students and the young ones to reduce their power consumption. In 2010, the university calculated an estimated amount of 60,000 dollars that they could’ve saved every year if those lights that aren’t in use are turned off.

The Lighting Controls are Efficient

You can save more energy in your house by turning off the lights using lighting controls. The lighting controls such as motion detectors or timers and dimmers can help reduce your energy consumption by automatically controlling your lights efficiently.

One of the technological innovations you can utilize is the motion sensor lights. These lights have sensors that can automatically recognize when there’s someone, or something is coming in your room. Hence, you won’t need to worry about turning on and off your lights when you leave your room.

On the other hand, you can utilize dimmers as an ideal lighting control that allows you to reduce wattage and power output that can help you save energy. They’re also inexpensive to install which enables you to bring an adequate amount of light in your room.

The motion sensors are also an ideal lighting control that can automatically turn your lights on when they can detect motion or movement. They can also automatically turn your lights off when the activity stopped. Hence, employing lighting controls will ensure that you can reduce wasted energy without checking each of your lights personally.

It Can Help the Environment

Turning off the lights when you leave your room can help save energy. It can also help reduce carbon emission and other harmful greenhouse gases. Hence, turning off your lights is a simple way to help protect the environment and save the planet.

It is essential to follow the general rules of thumb when it comes to turning off your lights. If you use incandescent bulbs, it’s vital to turn off the lights if you go out of your room for one minute or more. For fluorescent bulbs, you can leave the lights on if you’re out of your home for 15 minutes or less, and turn them off when you leave for more than 15 minutes.

Turning off your lights will also help reduce the use of non-renewable resources that are harmful to the environment. You can turn off the lights during the day especially if you don’t need them. You can also turn off your appliances to help reduce your carbon footprint and help save the planet.

Takeaway

Turning off the lights when you leave your home is a cost-effective way to reduce your wasted energy. You need to choose high-quality light bulbs to make your home more energy efficient. Moreover, it’s also helpful to know essential things such as those mentioned above to help keep your energy bills low, save money, and preserve the Earth.