Do you ever stop to consider the true impact of turning on the light?
What really changes when we flick the switch or, forget to turn it off? According to research, lighting contributes to about 6% of global carbon dioxide emissions.
The International Dark Sky Association estimates that 35% of artificial light is wasted by being poorly aimed or unshielded. Most of us are used to an unnatural urban glow (rather than a naturally dark night sky), which negatively impacts migrating birds, insects and other animals too, by disrupting the light-dark cycle they are tuned into. Artificial light can also affect our sleep and health.
Ella Pumford, the content manager at national housebuilder, St. Modwen Homes, has investigated the energy output of our homes’ light installations:
How many lightbulbs do you have in your house? You may be surprised to learn that the average is 67. The number seems large, but as you start to count, you may come across multiple lamps in your living room and ceiling lights that need a few bulbs to illuminate the space.
Our home electricity use is measured in kilowatt-hours (kWh). To power one kilowatt for one hour, or one kWh, would cost you around £0.12.
The average lightbulb is 60 watts, which means to power it for one hour would be 0.06 kWh. So, powering all 67 lights in your house for one hour would use 4.02 kWh. The cost of powering all these lights for one hour would cost £0.48. We’re not breaking the bank just yet.
However, with 28.1 million houses in the UK, it would take an impressive 112,962,000 kWh to power all homes’ lights for one hour. The cost of powering these homes’ lights for just one hour would cost a whopping £13,488,000.
But how could all this energy be put to a different use? How can we show just how much power is being fed into our homes? By comparing this energy use to other everyday activities, we can understand how electricity waste is a dim situation.
With the power needed to light up all UK homes for one hour, you could also:
Boil a kettle 617,278,688 times
Who doesn’t love a good cuppa? Well, the electricity used to power all UK homes’ lights for one hour would allow you to make a few extra cups than you may need on your next tea round.
Drive 201,192,020 miles
If you’re looking for an extensive road trip, you could’ve used the UK’s lightbulb energy to go for a long-distance drive in a petrol car. How long you ask? With the equivalent energy, you could drive to the moon and back 421 times.
Charge 9,738,003,525 smartphones
You’ve got a text! And it’s telling you to turn the lights off. That energy could be put to use on other things, namely charging over 9.7 billion smartphones.
Watch 141,202,500 hours of Netflix
It may feel like you’ve watched more than 141 million hours of Netflix over subsequent lockdowns during the pandemic, but that’s just the amount of time you’d have to watch if you used the equivalent lightbulb energy on the streaming platform. As of April 2020, UK Netflix subscribers had access to 36,000 hours of video content. So, you could watch the entire Netflix catalogue 3,922 times.
Go round the London Eye 451,848,000 times
Instead of sitting in a bright house, you could enjoy a bit of sightseeing instead. You’ll be able to see all the best monuments in London by riding the London Eye over 450 million times. Let’s just hope you don’t get dizzy too easily, it would be a long ride if you converted our lightbulb energy consumption to power this large wheel.
Power a football stadium for 4,518 matches
Change those home lights for stadium lights and enjoy some football games using the UK’s home light energy. At the 2022 FIFA World Cup, countries around the world will play a combined 363 matches. This means that the UK’s lightbulb consumption for one hour could power at least 12 opportunities for the England team to bring it home!
Power the Eiffel Tower for 14 years
Have you seen the lights on the Eiffel Tower? With laser beacons, projections, and spotlights, the monument shines like a diamond in the centre of Paris. But if you took the UK’s combined home lightbulb energy for one hour, you’d be able to power the Eiffel Tower for 14 years.
There’s a lot of power in our homes. Turning off the lights every now and then can do a lot to conserve energy for the good of the planet and our pockets.
Could someone have a word with my kids please!
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Strange focus for an article. When lightbulbs are off they’re off, most lightbulbs are off most of the time, they’re off more in summer than winter.
Smart devices sat there on standby, TV’s, HD drives, anything with a little l.e.d is sat there ‘on’ all the time, nibbling away at the leccy & converting electric into wasted heat.
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Well it was plumbing rather than electricity which was used by St.Mods in PR.
Stan “The Pumber” Clarke’s party piece,the founder of St Mods was to proudly hold up his his certificate in Plumbing gained at Stoke College when pitching to buy some land from local authorities to illustrate his humble roots.
It used to work a treat .
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“Ella Pumford, the content manager at national housebuilder, St. Modwen Homes, has investigated the energy output of our homes’ light installations:”
“The average lightbulb is 60 watts, which means to power it for one hour would be 0.06 kWh. So, powering all 67 lights in your house for one hour would use 4.02 kWh. The cost of powering all these lights for one hour would cost £0.48. We’re not breaking the bank just yet.”
I take then that St.Modwen Homes have yet to discover the advantages of installing LED in their new homes! Still no excuse to leave on when not required, but at 10% wattage of Incandescent ones, you will find a benefit to the EPC ratings on your new build, and I am sure your buyers would appreciate it as well. Just a thought.
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I have great respect for the dark sky movement and anything that can be done to reduce street lighting in the countryside and badly directed lighting I wholeheartedly support. But an average 60 watt lightbulb in your home? Was this article written 5 years ago? Over half the country has led bulbs now and the modern equivalent wattage is 4 not 60 for the same amount of brightness.
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The average is 67!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Do they live in Blackpool. Every time I check a property I can only find average 8 in a bungalow and 14 in a house are now LED, sometimes a property will have multiple ganged LED’s in kitchen and bathroom but to get to 67 …. big kitchen! Is the other 50 odd bulbs in the loft powering the cannabis plantation?
Another story that seems to be a load of nonsense. Wasted electricity and creating the greatest pollution/carbon foot print can be seen nightly from space and is made up mainly from street lighting when most are in bed.
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the 67 quoted seems to have come from study in America not GB
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Everything from her assumption of number of lightbulbs to energy usage is horrific. Not to mention the government has already commisioned reports on this that are readily available.
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It took me 2 seconds to find this out:
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/326085/Lighting_Report.pdf
“We found that the top 20% of households for lighting used more than 760 kWh/year, whereas the bottom 20% used less than 150 kWh/year. We also found some evidence people working part-time are more likely to be high users.” – so lets say an average of 450 kWh/year (divided by 365, then divided by 24 to give us 1 hour) = 1,443,493 kWh (her figure was x78 higher!). Thats a 7725.6% increase from my average figure to hers.
Not only that but I am using statistics from 2013 and I am sure that we’re even more energy efficient these days given the effect of MEES!
It took less than 5 minutes taken to denunk this nonsense…
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What with the stuff Getagent allowed to be published in their name yesterday, and this, one has to question what is going on!
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Yes, Robert – if folks didn’t know better, they could almost think that one complete ubernumpty with a complete disregard for care and attention to factuality is writing a load of utter, unadulterated MDT and white-labelling it for a number of different companies; and then ejecting column inches like an unstable quasar to a press hungry for content guaranteed to raise a titter or two from an audience that see the emperor’s shrivelled winky (credit: you) and not the fine clothes he’s trying to pretend he wears.
More fools them, were that to be the case. Which I’m sure it isn’t.
No-one would be that foolish – and even if they were, they could surely manage to produce sufficient bilge to irreparably damage their credibility themselves without resorting to – and presumably (drastically over)paying for – such f***wittery (credit Jonnnie) from a fouth-rate third party.
If that was the case, that is.
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you obviously know something I don’t Peebee. I thought Colby Short had attempted to grab some publicity for GetaGent and was going down the vexatious, pick a fight, route.
If you’re paying to have PR written and presenting on a B2B site it’s embarrassing if the copywriter doesn’t know the subject.
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