Saving electricity in home lighting

The absolute majority of electricity consumption in single-family homes goes to heating the house and hot water, but the next largest individual energy consumer in Finland is lighting, which accounts for an average of 10-20% of electricity consumption. It can be said that lighting consumes a significant amount of electricity. Now, with the price of electricity soaring and the adequacy of electricity partly a question mark, it is important to think about how electricity could be saved. This will benefit both your wallet and the grid. In addition to other methods, it is also easy to cut back on electricity consumption in lighting, and you don't necessarily need to reduce the amount of light. Of course, the same applies to all other spaces, not just your home.

One of the easiest and most effective ways to reduce the amount of electricity used for lighting is to replace old incandescent and energy-saving lamps with modern LED lamps. The efficiency of LED is significant compared to previous lighting technologies, as a 5W LED bulb can produce the same light output as an old 35W incandescent bulb. Roughly speaking, LED lights and bulbs achieve up to 6-7 times the light output with the same amount of electricity compared to before. Where a 60W incandescent bulb was used for bedroom lighting, for example, the same light output is achieved with a 9W LED bulb. In addition, with LED bulbs, the color tone of the light can often be chosen as desired: do you want a warm, atmospheric tone for the light or a neutral, pure white that emphasizes especially light surfaces?

How much electricity is saved?

Roughly speaking, at current electricity prices, upgrading lighting from old technologies to modern LED technology saves hundreds of euros per year. When the investment in upgrading lighting is discussed as an investment of only about 100-200€ at the cheapest level, it can be stated that the money spent on the upgrade is saved in less than a year in the form of saved electricity. In addition, LED lighting has a lifespan of over 20 years, while traditional bulbs need to be replaced about once a year. The calculations therefore do not take into account the purchase costs of old bulbs at all.

Example calculation

For example, the lighting in a house uses 8 60W bulbs, 5 40W bulbs and a few smaller lamps, e.g. in the kitchen, in the storage room and on the outer walls. In total, the lamps consume 8 x 60W, 5 x 40W and the other lights consume a total of e.g. 120W. When the lights are on, the electricity consumed per hour is 480 Wh + 200 Wh + 120 Wh = 800 Wh. If the lights are on for an average of 5 hours a day, the daily consumption is 4000 Wh (4 kWh), the monthly consumption is 120,000 Wh (120 kWh) and the annual consumption is 1,440,000 Wh (1,440 kWh).

If we take the electricity price today, which is quite realistic (for many the price is considerably higher), as 25 c/kWh, the euros spent would be as follows: approx. 1€ per day, approx. 30€ per month and approx. 360€ per year.

Correspondingly, if the lighting were upgraded to LED technology, the figures would be as follows: 8 x 9W, 5 x 6W and an additional approx. 20W, a total of 122 W. At the same 5-hour daily use, 610 Wh of electricity would be consumed per day, 18,300 Wh (18.3 kWh) per month and 219,600 Wh (219.6 kWh) per year. Converted into euros, this would be 0.15€/day, 4.58€/month and 54.90€/year. With these lamps alone, over 300€ would be saved in electricity per year. The calculations also included very limited lighting, i.e. it does not take into account e.g. possible yard lights, garage lighting, etc. Many people may have even double the number of lamps in use.

Replacing this number of lamps with LED bulbs would cost roughly €200-300, depending on the desired lamps and bulbs. It can therefore be said that at current electricity prices, the amount of money invested in LED lights pays for itself in less than a year. In the example, we used AGGE LED bulbs as LED bulbs. A traditional 60W E27-base incandescent bulb could be replaced with a 9W LED bulb (AGGE E27, 9W) and E14 bulbs with a 6W alternative. In addition to saving electricity, LED bulbs also save significantly in longer replacement intervals: the service life of an incandescent bulb is roughly 1000-1500 hours, and the corresponding figure for LEDs is approx. 25,000 hours. Incandescent bulbs should therefore be replaced about once a year, while LEDs last more than 20 years.

Outdoor lights

Of course, the most electricity is saved when the light is not in use. In terms of savings, it is important that the lights are turned off in those rooms where light is not needed at the time. Indoors and with outdoor lights that can be controlled from inside, this is still relatively easy, as you do not have to leave the house to adjust the lighting. However, outdoor lighting is often a bit more challenging if the lights do not have separate switches installed. In addition, if you want to put some kind of seasonal lights outside, which are plugged into a socket, for example, during Christmas, these cannot usually be controlled directly from indoors. Although current seasonal lights are very energy-efficient, they should not be left on when no one needs or sees the lights.

Our range also includes a couple of solutions that save electricity in outdoor lighting. The first is the use of lights with motion sensors. These only turn on the light when there is movement in the yard, and the yard is not lit unnecessarily when no one is there. AGGE's range includes several general lights with motion sensors of varying power for lighting areas of different sizes. For example, the 20W AGGE Floodlight is enough to illuminate even a larger yard area sufficiently for moving around in the yard.

Another solution, especially great for seasonal lights, is to use a remote-controlled or so-called smart socket. These are connected directly to a ready-made socket, and the lights can be turned on and off directly from the inside using a remote control (or a phone in the case of a smart socket). In addition, smart sockets can be used to set specific timers for the lights, so that the lights only come on in the evening, for example. Our range includes several remote-controlled sockets for every use: Sockets.