Energy Star

What better day to think about energy consumption?  With today's projected high -3 (-35 wind chill) my furnace is working overtime to keep us comfortable.

We made it through Christmas without a huge jump in energy use and still came in 3rd place with our exterior lights. 

We've also made many energy improvements in the recent years,  but or utility bill still shows us as less efficient than our neighbors. Grrrr

One thing we haven't been willing to do is change from incandescent to CFL light bulbs.  There are many reasons we don't like CFL bulbs. Now there are LED and they are much more similar to incandescent. They operate outside in our extreme cold, instant brightness when the switch is flipped, more traditional appearance, no mercury, and the deal breaker available in soft white. Yes those warm amber tones trump the blue and green tones in our house. 

Sam's Club was running a special and the utility company was offering 50% rebate so I decided to switch out our most used fixtures. 

2 farthest are LED. You can see that they are brighter,
but the color is the same.

I was surprised by how big of a difference those few lights made! They are brighter, cheaper, supposedly last 20 years, and look the same, I am sold.  Going forward I will be replacing any broken bulb with a new LED. I even picked up 16 strings LED Christmas lights on sale. I got such great deals on those after Christmas that I got 100% rebate from the utility company on most of them! I have already gotten rid of most of the old strings, and will hopefully replace the remaining next year.