Home electricity use in US falling to 2001 levels
 

Someone posted this on Ecomodder. Its very encouraging! Needless to say we could all be doing better, but its nice to see that we ARE actually doing better. :thumbup:

Home electricity use in US falling to 2001 levels - CenturyLink

Good to see the usage declining. I can’t wait until inverter tech is used in all heat pumps and the price comes down this would help reduce power consumed. But LED light can really help as more people adopt them.

Correct HVAC sizing and installation is a FAR bigger factor in power use than the SEER rating of "the box".

I've switched over various rooms in my house to custom LED lighting. The kitchen alone had three 75W fluorescent fixtures, which I've replaced with custom built fixtures with LED strips in them. The light output is about the same for a total power draw of about 45W. I can only estimate, but I'd say the kitchen alone has saved me on the order of 10 bucks a month in electricity. Doing this in the other rooms should add up over time in savings :)
People say you can't do much with lighting, but just add up how many Wh the lighting in your house uses per month, and how much power you could conserve by cutting that in half. I've found the numbers to be significant.

30W per fixture savings x 3 fixtures = 90W. If you pay 10 cents per KWH you need to save 100KWH to save $10. 100KWH/90W savings = 1,111 hours per month. Problem is there are only 720hrs in a month.

The bigger thing that determines payback time is how much the mod costs. At retail prices the value isn't there. If you can buy the items at substantial discount then payback times are a lot shorter.

A decent portion of this savings is due to energy efficiency mandates and subsidies from the government. The Energy Star rating system is far from the best in the world, but it is helping to reduce overall use (believe it or not). Much like the nutrition facts label on food, a somewhat savvy customer has facts plainly visible on the package. It is now much easier to compare like products to determine average energy costs.

LEDs can be dimmed and don't mind being turned on and off a lot, both of which mean the actual savings are more than the wattage would say.

As a plus the led bulbs last over 50,000 hrs which cuts down on replacement costs while using half as much energy as florescent bulb. If a person swapped in led bulbs every time a florescent (or incandescent) burned out you could transition to LED's without a hefty bill.
I imagine it won't be long before LED's are a requirement in new buildings, to conserve the nations energy.

The LED itself may have a theoretical life of 50K hrs but what about the practical life of the supporting electronics? Early CFL's were marketed (at $14.95 each) with claims of 10K hrs life. They went poof after just a few low voltage events due to poor protection circuits. Even modern CFL's rarely last 1000 hrs here.

I started putting LED indicator lights in machine controls because I got tired of burnt out bulbs. Now I have to replace complete indicators instead of just the bulbs.

CFL's are down to $1.50 each. I'll stick with them until the LED price drops one decimal place and I see evidence that LED's last at least 10% of their claimed life.

The problem is an LED with the lumen output of a T8 is quite expensive and the lumen per watt isn't much better. T5 is even more efficient that T8, although T5 is still on the pricey side. What is the Lumen output of the 45W LED fixture vs. the 75W T8 fixture?

LED is very effective at spot/flood lighting because it does it "natively", where other technologies are omnidirectional and rely on reflectors for light angles.