The only thing worse than reading your electric bill, be it residential or commercial, is reading a phone bill and it\’s close to a toss up. Before we can really understand what our savings will be from switching to LED\’s, we should probably take a quick jog around the electric bill and learn the language in which they tell us how we\’re going to pay hand over fist to keep our current incandescent and fluorescent lights. So let\’s dive into the electric bill and and then touch base on a hidden savings that LED lights shine the light on (pardon the pun).

First, what is the unit that our electricity is paid in? Electricity is charge in Kilolwatt hours. This is essentially a measure of a given amount of energy over a given amount of time. A watt is a tiny thing so we multiply that up by 1000 (the kilo in our case) to make it a more manageable number. Even that is a pretty small amount so we look at running a Kilowatt for increments of 1 hours as a baseline to bill electricity on. 1 KWH is our basic unit and that\’s the first part of deciphering the electric bill. Next, let\’s talk about how much each of the KWH\’s costs us to power our electric lights and usage.

The next key component is the cost per KWH and this can fluctuate not only from State to State but from industry to industry and you can even get diffference in the same State due to usage, different utility companies, and other constraints. You can quickly look at the baseline cost per KWH at this site here which is handy. On average, residential electricity will cost more than office/commercial, which will cost more than industrial. This is primary an enticement to keep industry in a State since electricity can be such a large cost factor to running their business. There are wide discrepancies in cost between industry and residential and especially from State to State. Let\’s look at rough cost per KWH and a key savings that LED lighting can uncover which might not be immediately apparent while comparing apples and apples.

Residential costs might run around 12-15 cents on average depending on the State. Commercial usually 1-2 cents lower and Industrial is usually 1-2 cents lower still with 10 cents being a pretty average estimate but that\’s just the baseline electricity costs. Of course, it can always go up from there. It\’s not uncommon for their to be tiers on your electric bill. This is the killer. Essentially, the utility might quote 14 cents for a certain amount of electricity (certain number of KWH). Once you use up those KWH, you then go into a second, higher tier cost of energy. This may jump to 18 cents. That\’s right, a 30% increase just like that but we\’re not done yet. A third tier might take you to 25 cents and so on. I just looked at a California residential bill where the bulk of the energy was actually on the 4th tier at 32 cents. A good 80% of the electricity was billed at this level so 14 cents becomes almost laughable and this house wasn\’t housing lasers in the garage! Why are these tiers important?

If you switch to LED and you are able to bring down your electric load on the whole bill, you will not only drop the cost per KWH of your lighting costs but the electric costs for the entire property! LED lighting should be able to drop you down the tiers and therefore save not only on the decreased energy usage (drop in KWH) but also on the drop in cost per KWH. This has a magnifying effect beyond just the drop in energy use in LED\’s which is sizeable.

Author Bio: Dennis Jarvis writes extensively about LED lighting and LED light bulbs
for industrial, office, commercial, grow lights, and residential lighting and how they can save energy costs and money.

Category: Finances
Keywords: led lights, led lighting, led light bulb, led grow lights, led industrial lighting, led office light