With electricity bills rising by 7% in the last year alone, and set to rise again this winter, one of the latest moneysaving tips is to switch from halogen to LED lighting. To help you work out how much you can save, Panasonic has launched the online savings calculator.
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Panasonic has just entered the LED lighting market and announced its first range which has all the quality and reliability you would expect from the world-renowned brand. The range offers the same brightness as halogen and traditional incandescent bulbs, and the intensity of the light is immediate, with no ‘warm up’ time. More eco-friendly than halogen and incandescent, the bulbs use up to 89% less energy and last up to 25 years. That is 25 times longer than the halogen equivalent. So it will be a very, very long time until the next bulb change. In the meantime, you save money.
The savings calculator is easy to use. Simply select the number of LED lights you could use in your home. Add in roughly how long they would be on each day, and you’ll see how much money you could be saving.
For example, a household changing 10 50W spotlights with an average usage of three hours a day saves £65.92 a year. That’s the equivalent of 134 pints of milk, 52 loaves of bread or the average cost of a mobile phone bill for four months.
Over the bulbs’ 25 year lifetime that saving rises to a huge £1,648.
Changing just one bulb saves £6.59 per year, so if each UK household (26.3m) changed just one bulb the UK could save a whopping £173 million on domestic energy bills every year.
Energy saving top tips from Simon Eves, Environmental Affairs Manager at Panasonic UK:
Take a shower - A five minute shower uses an average of 30 litres of water compared to a bath’s 80 litres (and that’s only if it’s half-filled). Serious energy savings are to be had by using the shower day-to-day, and saving the long soak for the weekend.
Say goodbye to standby - Unplug your electric toothbrush and phone charger when you’re not using them. On average, UK households spend £35 each year powering appliances left in standby mode.
Use Panasonic energy saving LED light bulbs – Using a 7W LED bulb (equivalent to 50W halogen bulb) for four hours a day would typically save you £8.97 a year, or up to £224 by the time you need to replace the bulb in 25 years time. Find out how much you could save with Panasonic’s online savings calculator.
Exclude pesky drafts – Check all your windows and doors for draughts. Once you’ve found out where the draughts are in your home, using draught excluders will stop cold air getting in and heating bills going up. If you’re willing to get creative and make your own draught excluder, this simple solution will cost you next to nothing.
Use the right lighting – if you’re watching TV, you won’t need a bright light on all the time, so use a lower wattage LED bulb. The same goes in the bedroom, use brighter side lights when you’re reading for example, but for those more romantic moments, lower the wattage.
Be clever in the kitchen – households can save £35 a year by being energy savvy:
- Only use your tumble dryer when you can’t dry your clothes outside
- Don’t fill your kettle right up to the top every time – just boil the amount of water you need
- Leave a third of the space in your fridge or freezer free - if your fridge or freezer is packed full of food then it will take more energy to keep it cool
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