Save on Lighting 
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Electricity makes lighting so easy. Flick a switch and there you go, brilliant light whenever you want it.
A far cry from carrying a candle round after dark - only 100 years ago.
They say lighting typically uses about 13 - 19% of the electricity in a house. But just how much of this is wasted by lights on in empty rooms ? In my experience it’s more than half – often much more. This means we are paying good money (and emitting bad Carbon) for illumination that no-one is using.
POSITIVE STEPS:
Reduce use - Switch off:
It’s so easy to switch ‘em on, but boy is hard to switch ‘em off ! Seriously, once you get into looking for waste energy in the house, lights left on become one of the most glaring examples.
Think of this: You go into the kitchen to get a drink, switch the lights on (4 x 50 W halogen spots in our case) and get what you need. Then go and sit down in the lounge for the evening - all the while the kitchen lights are still on. It's a couple of hours before you're back in the kitchen switching things off for the night. Sound familiar ?!
Overall the lights have been burning for two hours, yet there’s actually only been someone in the room for about 2 minutes. So the maths says you’ve consumed 120 units but only used 2.
The remaining 118 have simply illuminated the sink and needlessly racked up your bill and Carbon footprint.
Switching off as we go is such a simple, yet such a powerful habit to get into. Even if you just do it once, take a look around the house now, see where you can flick it off … and feel good with every saving you make !
Be more efficient:
The traditional light bulb is a tremendously inefficient piece of technology. Around 90% of the energy used is wasted as heat to make only 10% light. Nowadays we are in the middle of a changeover to more efficient lighting, and there’s a growing choice of options.
If you haven’t changed bulbs in your house yet, it’s a great opportunity to cut your consumption. Energy saving bulbs typically use 5 times less electricity for a given brightness. They're sometimes called CFLs (Compact Fluorescent Lights).
Start by selecting the five lights you use the most, and go get some suitable replacements bulbs. There’s a whole range of sizes and shapes these days and most of them have come a long way from the slow-warming, flickery first ones.
It’s a personal thing, but in doing this I’ve found I’ve often upgraded in terms of brightness at the same time, eg: replaced a 100W bulb with a 23 Watt CFL to give effectively “125W” of light. More light for substantially less energy.
Know your lights:
Once you have started to make your lights more efficient, it’s then a matter of knowing which ones are consuming the most - and making sure that of all the lights, they are the ones not left burning unnecessarily.
Go “Watt Spotting” and find the highest power ones – if you’re going to switch off anything, make these biggies your first target !
For us it’s the kitchen halogen spots. At 4 x 50W = 200W these take the consumption crown, and so are the first to get switched off when leaving the kitchen. It’s amazing to think that leaving these on for just 20mins uses as much energy as leaving the main light (an 18W CFL) on for nearly four hours.
Watch this space:
There’s some really exciting things going on in LED lighting right now. LEDs use even less power than a CFL, come in all sorts of colours and are great for accent lighting. Just beginning to come into the DIY market, you can already buy some great LED bulbs and lamps on sites like this:
