Lighting Your Way
To Big Savings at Home

The price may now be right to cast out those old incandescent bulbs and light your home with energy-efficient compact fluorescents.

A number of retailers are offering "compact fluorescent lamps" or CFLs in multiple-unit packs for a fraction of their former price. At Home Depot, for example, a pack of four 13-watt CFLs -- providing the same illumination as a standard 60-watt bulb -- currently costs $7.97 or less than $2 each. Five years ago, a single bulb cost $7.97.

The Energy Federation, a not-for-profit company that distributes energy-efficient products, says the average price of a CFL is around $3, down from $9 in 2000 and $20 in 1990.

CFLs can be cheaper than traditional bulbs when the CFLs' longer lives are factored in -- and the savings is multiplied by the CFLs' stingy energy consumption.

CFLs last, on average, eight times as long as incandescent bulbs, according to a spokeswoman for the Environmental Protection Agency's Energy Star program. A package of six 60-watt incandescents sells in most Home Depot locations for $2.92, or 49 cents per bulb. You would spend almost $4 to provide the same amount of light over the lifetime of one $2 CFL from the same retailer.

With CFLs, you also save big on energy costs. Replacing one 60-watt incandescent with a 13-watt CFL might save you about $30 in energy costs over the life of the CFL, according to the EPA.

"With the price of CFLs going down and the cost of energy going up, it makes sense to replace more and more bulbs with the [energy-efficient] lamps," says Jennifer Thorne Amann, a senior research associate for the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy.

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