Reduce Your Lighting Bill

A home that is not well lit can be a dreary and depressing place. That is why homeowners go the extra mile to ensure that their homes are will illuminated. A downside of this is that often electricity consumption increases resulting in high utility bills. It is possible to keep a home bright and happy while minimizing the power consumption. All it takes is the cost-effective purchase of user friendly new technology and adopting some simple power saving concepts.

• Maximize The Use Of Daylight: Sunlight is clean, healthy and free and when the sun is out, the use of the light it produces should be maximized. The obvious way to do this is to keep curtains and blinds open to allow light to enter the home. However, this may not be enough. Geographical, environmental and architectural design issues may not allow adequate amounts of sunlight to enter. That is when electricity has to be used to add brightness to the home, even if it is bright outside. Adding windows and skylights to allow more light to enter a house, if at all possible, is a costly, messy and time-consuming process that could also ruin the appearance of the home. Daylighting systems, or Tubular Daylighting Devices (TDDs) offer an economical, clean and quick way to bring more natural sunlight into your home. TDDS use roof mounted light collectors to capture sunlight and then carry it, via special highly reflective tubes, to the most interior parts of a home. This means that even parts of the house where there is no access to sunlight, such as closets, can be illuminated with bright, clear natural light. Installation of TDDS is quick, clean and does not require any structural modifications to the home. And, of course, TDDs run for free.

• Use Energy Efficient Light Bulbs: Use only LEDs in your home. They consume only about 20% of the electricity of traditional bulbs and last far longer. This more than compensates for the slightly higher cost of the LEDs.

• Control Brightness:  It is possible for a room to be over illuminated. A room that is so bright that it hurts the eyes or makes people in it uncomfortable, is an overly bright room. Reducing the wattage of the bulbs used will make the room more comfortable and also lower the amount of electricity consumed.

• Choose The Right Fittings: Light fittings are an integral part of the décor of the home and styles and designs are chosen for that reason. While there is no need to compromise on this, using fittings that work with the décor but do not obstruct the light that is radiated will also allow fewer lights or lower wattage bulbs to be used.

• Use Dimmers: The amount of light required in a room can vary depending on time of day, occupancy and what is happening there. Dimmers allow you to control the lighting to suit the requirement and by doing so, control the amount of electricity consumed.

• Sensors And Timers: Installing these enable you to set the time when lights come on or ensure that lights do not remain on in empty rooms.

These few basic steps can make a significant impact on your utility bills. The right place to start is by installing daylighting systems. This will reduce the need for electric lighting during the day and with these in place, deciding on the other actions you can take to reduce power consumption becomes much easier.