When Jason Chroman relocated from San Francisco to the suburbs, he and his family moved into a bigger, newer house. It was all very exciting until their first electric bill arrived. “The house was maybe 30 percent bigger, but the electric bill was something like 200 percent more,” Chroman said. So he started looking around to figure out what could be using so much power. He found the answer when he looked up: “Because it was a new house, it had a lot of recessed lighting, all of which was incandescent,” he said.
Chroman is the vice president of finance at a Silicon Valley start-up called Tubular Labs, so he put the money skills he honed on the job to work at home. The question: Since LED light bulbs cost more but use less energy, how soon would they pay for themselves? He was surprised to find that because of California’s high energy prices, he could recoup his costs in less than two months. “When I figured out the economics of each bulb, I upgraded all the bulbs in the house,” Chroman said. “It cost me a bundle, but my power bill went down by about half. I was blown away by how much electricity lighting consumes.”
Read full story here: Why you should switch to LED lightbulbs right now, before the law requires it – The Washington Post
