In an email from the neighborhood association today:
Leaving your porch light on:
A dark neighborhood is like a magnet to criminals. Leaving your porch light on will not only deter them, but will also help make the neighborhood safer.
If you're concerned about energy costs, keeping the porch light on 24/7 is actually better in a way because the most energy is used turning the light on (this is why they usually blow out when you turn them on). With your average 60 watt bulb, you can leave it on all day using less energy than you would if you turned it on twice in the day. I think it was 17 hours worth of energy that it uses to turn it on.
Being a librarian, I couldn't let this "fact" just slide by. Of course I responded (I thought nicely, Brandon thought not) with four sources--including a .gov site, a .edu, a .org, and it was even on Mythbusters on tv! Info from them below...
Based on the amount of energy consumed turning on the bulb, they were able to calculate how long the bulb would have to be turned off in order to make it worth the energy savings, i.e. "It's best to turn off the bulb if you are leaving the room for":
Incandescent: 0.36 seconds
CFL: 0.015 seconds
Halogen: .51 seconds
LED: 1.28 seconds
Fluorescent: 23.3 seconds
In other words, its almost always best to turn the bulb off. Even the 23 seconds for the fluorescent lights isn't very long, and the rest of the times are pretty much blinks of an eye.
1 comment:
Or you could put one of those light sensing sockets (like we have at our house) in and screw the bulb into that. Then you don't have to turn it on or off at all, it will come on and go off all by itself and not burn during daylight hours!
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