Be aware of 'light heat'

If you use energy saving lights throughout the house you may find you have to turn your heating up. Why? because normal incandescent light bulbs convert a larger proportion of their electricity into heat. For a normal 100W incandescent bulb, these proportions are approximately:

• 3W of the energy produces light and 97W produces heat
  

This means that the replacement of approximately twelve 100W incandescent light bulbs with equivalent energy saving bulbs that only produce approximately 17W of heat, would be the equivalent of turning off a 1kW electric fire. So, during winter months you may need to find extra heat from somewhere. And also, if you don't want heat during the summer, change to an energysaving light bulb, and then back to an incandescent bulb in winter, as a suggestion.

Remember, this is also why it makes sense to use energy saving light bulbs outdoors. If you use normal incandescent bulbs indoors, at least the house is benefiting from the heat they generate, whereas outdoors you're losing all the heat to the atmosphere.

(This a reproduction of Energy Saving Tip5 on our sister site, the Energy Saving Centre - see www.energysaving.co.uk - and follows on from our comments on the eventual demise of 100W incandescent light bulb)