What if you could light your entire home with fewer watts than a microwave oven?
It may sound ridiculous, but with today's energy-efficient lighting options, you can.
For the Energy Efficiency Lab Home, we came up with a whole-house lighting design that features under-counter task lighting and over cabinet lighting in the kitchen, over doorway lighting in the dining room, stylish sconces in the upstairs hallway, and just the right level of ambient light for maximum comfort-all for about 1180 watts, the same as a small microwave. That's less than half a watt per square foot.
We made it happen by using a unique combination of compact fluorescents (CFLs), standard fluorescents and up-to-the-minute LED (light emitting diode) lights-all forms of lighting that take a fraction of the electricity of traditional incandescent bulbs.
We designed the lighting system to work for the people who will eventually live there, because we know that good lighting can mean the difference between a house and a home.
No need for blue-toned office lights-today's fluorescents can be as warm-looking and flattering as traditional bulbs. Plus, we've thought about where people really need light, and what kind, so we're hoping they won't have to plug in a lot of extra fixtures-keeping the watts used at the magic, microwave number.
Over the course of the next three years, we'll be monitoring the impact of different combinations of lighting on the lab home's performance. Advances in lighting technology, especially LED, are happening fast, so the lighting scheme we've opted for, and the balance among CFLs, regular fluorescents and LEDs in it, may change to keep up with that technology.
