Hydro season... oy vey!

[Worker-Intellectual]

It's that time of year again. The time of year when Manitoba Hydro tries to get you to buy compact fluourescent light bulbs...

Manitoba is a hydro province. Now, due to price controls, they have to sell power to Manitobans at a certain rate, which is lower than they can sell it to other provinces for (one town in Ontario was considering "switching sides" because of this). So they want Manitobans using less energy so they can sell it to other provinces and the US cheaper. So, every year they try to get you to buy those curly compact fluourescent light bulbs, and they'll mail you out some rebates... And guess what we sell... which goes on sale a lot...

I hate those things. It seems like every other customer looking for those light bulbs is trying to use a mail-in thing from Hydro as a coupon or bothering me for the details of Hydro's promotion. I DON'T WORK FOR HYDRO (yet...with any luck, I'll excape my retail hell this summer). If I did, I would make at least 1.5 times what I make now, and have somewhat regular hours. So someone should tell the customers to stop bothering me about Hydro's promotions and read the damn rebate form themselves!

[bean]

Smack them and tell them you don't work for hydro. Again.

On a serious note, I actually have my entire apartment outfitted with CFL's, and they did lower my electric bill quite a bit.

[Sofar]

Seattle City Light wants us to buy those things. They give off a pasty, pallid glow. If you could possibly have beige light this would be it. Plus, they have to warm up, when you turn them on they're very dim for a few minutes. Another problem is that the refuse company won't let us throw them out when they break, flourescent lights are considered toxic. So what exactly am I supposed to do with them? They don't last forever.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

Same thing is going on in Wisconsin. There's a rebate if you buy a certain number of those bulbs.

[protege]

Smack them and tell them you don't work for hydro. Again.

On a serious note, I actually have my entire apartment outfitted with CFL's, and they did lower my electric bill quite a bit.

I've been fitting them into all of my household lamps. Not only do they save me a bit of cash (I tend to leave some of my lights on so the kitty isn't alone in the dark), but they don't get as hot as regular bulbs.

I've noticed that the lower-wattage ones (less than those equivalent to 60w) tend to "warm up" more slowly. But, once they do, the light is pretty much the same as a regular bulb.

[Rahmota]

Sofar I'm not sure what kind of lights you have but my CFL's (Everythign in my house except the fridge and the bathroom has CFL's in them) turn on in less than asecond and give off a nice blue white light. A cooler color than the yellowish glare of incandesents I think. But about the only time they take a wile to warm up is the one on the inside the porch when its cold weather. Or if we've been gone and had the heat turned down in the winter. ie less than say about 60 or so.

As for getting rid of them I take them to a local recycling center that also disposes of "toxic" household waste. Such as the kid's shoes with the mercury switches, old computers and tvs and such. They don't pay you for them but I'm pretty sure they get paid for it.

And yeah replacing all the lights with them dropped my bill by about 30 bucks a month.

[Gurndigarn]

Just a few comments from someone who also has to pay attention to lights and light quality as part of his job (damn, this job has given me some specialties I never expected...)

The color of the light depends on the manufacturer and type of light. They range from a yellowish light to a more blueish light, and a few that are hard to tell from regular incandescent.

How long they take to light up depends on, again, brand. Some are instant; some take a bit longer, but they rarely take more than a few seconds to come on fully. In general, the faster they heat up, the longer they last, but that's a vague generality, and when the off-brand companies start making them, it may not stay true.

I'm guessing they cut $15-$20 US monthly from my utilities, at least. I didn't get much of a benchmark at my current place before I started switching. (Although the impetus to switch came because a number of the light sockets in nice, but pricey, light fixtures started breaking because of frequent bulb changing, and I got tired of replacing the silly things. And I was tired of changing bulbs somewhere in the house every other week).

Also as an aside, if you use AC a lot, this will vaguely help there, too, since incandescents get HOT. (Think about it— an Easy-Bake Oven is heated by one 100-watt bulb. That's it.)

[Crosshair]

I buy the "sunlight" bulbs. As for disposing of them, I just chuck them in with my regular trash.

[Sofar]

Not around here. We don't get to throw things out here. Though I admit I do like the bluish ones during the summer, they're hard to get because everyone makes the beigish ones because they look more like incadescent light, which is what they think we want. And I still have the old burnt out ones I bought this summer, because to get rid of them I'd have to drive to the dump, and the waste of fuel and time involved in doing so offsets whatever money I've saved.

[LostMyMind]

I just don't turn on the lights, save me alot in electric there