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Change a lightbulb with just a pair of hands and a willingness to help the environment
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AUD0307Lightbulbs

Hewan Tomlinson talks about the benefits of CFL’s

GAINESVILLE — You wake up in the morning, turn on the light in your bathroom and ... POP!

The light bulb has blown once again.

But in today’s world we can avoid this hassle — at least, from happening so frequently — with energy-efficient light bulbs that in turn help the environment and reduce our power bills.

"Coal-burning power plants are responsible for 40 percent of all of our emissions, greenhouse gas emissions," said Hewan Tomlinson of the Environmental Protection Agency’s Energy Star program. "Because Energy Star qualified CFLs (compact fluorescent lamp) use 75 percent less energy you can see the reduction in energy."

These new and improved light sources are most commonly referred to as CFLs.

"Fortunately they have gotten to be more readily available," said Alan Shed, a commercial-industrial engineer with Jackson EMC. "You can buy them in just about any store, and they are available in more sizes and styles.

"When they first came out, besides being expensive, some of them weren’t as pretty to look at and they were larger and wouldn’t fit in a standard lamp. Now they even make some that from the exterior look like a regular incandescent light bulb because they have a globe over them."

Shed added that the bulbs are also available in different colors, including a cool, blue-white, daylight or a warm light.

The CFLs use 75 percent less energy than an incandescent bulb and produce less heat, which translates into lower bills and less cooling of your home or office.

"An incandescent bulb heats light by heating the metal up so hot that it glows," Shed said. "Ninety-five percent of the energy that goes into an incandescent light bulb comes out as heat; only 5 percent comes out as light. So that is why it wastes so much energy."

According to Shed, a typical incandescent light bulb will last 1,000 hours, and a typical CFL has a life of 10,000 hours.

But not all fixtures can use the CFLs efficiently to the full life of the light, Shed said.

"Some compact fluorescents, when you turn them on, may take a minute to come up to full brightness," he said. "Don’t use in closets or in the hall or in least used places, in those applications it won’t last 10,000 hours. ... The best place to use a compact fluorescent is in those lamps that you use all the time.

"It’s also good in a place that is a hard to reach location; the longer lamp life makes it more convenient."

For eight years now, the Energy Star program, through the EPA, has been sponsoring the Change a Light campaign to teach Americans about what CFLs can do for your home and the environment as a whole.

"The beauty of Change a Light is, as people are becoming more concerned about the environment and global climate change, they see it as such a large scale issue. ... So this campaign is about the tremendous impact that an individual can have in addressing this problem when taken collectively."

Tomlinson also addressed the added cost in installing CFLs in your home or business.

"As time goes on and as the technology is adopted, the price will drop," she said. "The prices for CFLs have dropped dramatically over time ... to an average cost (of) $2 to $3."

Brenau University is one place where the new light bulbs have been implemented on a large scale. The university has started using more energy efficient products to heat, cool and light the school.

"What we did is we went through and installed electronic ballasts to the light fixtures," said Wayne Dempsey, executive vice president and chief financial officer at Brenau. "Which means that when you flip the switch, instead of having to heat up the gas to create the fluorescent light, it does it electronically so quickly. That is a huge energy saver."

Brenau also has implemented an energy saving plan that identifies money to add energy saving products throughout the university.

"We are paying for it with guaranteed energy savings, so I didn’t have to develop new monies for it," Dempsey said. "The money that we are saving on our gas, water and electric bill is paying for the cost of the equipment that we are putting in"