Lights

I have been giving a lot of thought to electricity, what else we could do to reduce our usage and light bulbs or lighting.

I like having timers on a number of lights in the house, that I change frequently.  We also have two outside lights on timers as well that help with when we are out at night so we don't have to come home in the dark.

Before I really began to think about all the electric usage, they were all on quite often and for many hours.  I have cut back all lighting drastically, except for one small, low watt bulb in the dining room.  When it is on, it lights up a majority of the area and can be seen all the way from our bedroom at night so that if you need to get up you aren't in total darkness.

Almost all of the lamps are the new energy efficient compact fluorescent bulbs.  But, I have to say, they have gone down in price over the years, and quality.  Seventeen years ago, when we began to use them, we paid $13.00 each and those lasted for 7 years.  Not bad for $13.00.  Now, the price is less, I think around $7.00 a piece and it seems they last maybe two years.

I have reduced the amount of time each light is on, and I feel this has significantly reduced our electric bill.  Where the outside lights would go on at dusk and stay on until about 11 pm, I have set the timers by day and only have them on for about an hour around the time that I feel I will be out and coming home.  Plus, if they come on and I am home, I turn them off, I don't leave them to run their full cycle.  The thing I like about these in wall timers is that they have a random feature where it will change the times that it comes on, on it's own. 

The other inside timers I now only set to come on when I know I am going to be out in the evening.  They do not come on every night.

As I mentioned in another blog post, I have been doing other things, such as unplugging appliances not in use, and my computer and printer.  The past two months our bill went down $40.00 the first month and another $10.00 the second month.  That is quite a bit of a savings, don't you think?

So, now, I'm trying to think of even another way to save a bit, I want to look into finding a portable solar light that I could put in the kitchen and our bedroom, that way I wouldn't have to use either one of those lights at night either, they would just run on whatever stored solar power they have each day.

I know that we could probably look into solar energy for the house, but I honestly don't feel we will be here in five years and so I'd like to look at that for our future, final home.

Do you have any ideas of a portable solar light that might work?