Hello, Payback!

Eric • 24th Mar 2007 • Energy

I’ve been dying to get an electric bill ever since we switched our lights – and yesterday was the day!

Now, you have to take a lot of things into consideration… not just the dollar-value of the bill, but $ / kWh and days in the reading period as well. While the price per kWh went up 3.4% this month, my average daily usage went down 19.21%! In the 30 days ending February 21, we used an average of 32.67 kWh / day; in the 28 days ending March 21, we used only 26.39 kWh / day.

Blah, blah, blah… what does this mean, in dollars? The month was shorter, the price was higher, we used less energy, and saved $35.72. Looks like the ROI on this project is somewhere between 2 and 3 months.

I really didn’t think it’d turn around that soon, but I’m happy to see it has. Assuming it’ll take 3 months to fully recoup my costs, and each bulb lasts 5 years (as they claim to), I’ll save about $1,542.42 (57 months at $27.06 (monthly average savings)) over the next 5 years. Oh, and I’ll keep 7,275 lbs. of C02 from contributing to the whole global warming thing.