How much money are those who buy incandescent light bulbs losing?

Energy efficiency, which is a necessity for the green energy transition and the fight against climate change, starts with ourselves. For example, with what kind of lamps we use.

Uzbekistan several years ago envisioned a transition to energy-efficient light-emitting diode (LED) lamps, both in homes and workplaces. In contrast to the previously massively used incandescent lamps of 100 W and more, LED lamps save both electricity and money for paying for its use.

The main argument used by people who still buy incandescent bulbs is their lower cost. However, it is important to realize that their relative cheapness is caused by the fact that they are produced practically at cottage industries with violations of safety techniques, that is, they are of poor quality. This, in turn, is a factor in fire hazards and disturbances in the energy system of the buildings where they are used.

And now about how money is spent by those who still use incandescent bulbs and think to save money on it. Here are some simple and straightforward calculations.

– A 100-watt bulb uses an average of 800 watts per hour for 8 hours a day and 24 kilowatt-hours per month.

– A 7-watt energy-saving bulb consumes 56 watts for 8 hours a day and 1.6 kilowatt-hours per month (30 days).

This means that one energy-saving bulb saves 22.4 kilowatt-hours of electricity per month.

That is, LED lamp consumes 15 times less electricity!

And according to the current tariff of 295 soums, it will give financial savings of 6,608 soums per month or 79,296 soums per year. And this is only due to the replacement of one (!) incandescent bulb with an energy-saving LED lamp. An elementary calculation is enough to understand how those who try to buy cheaper bulbs lose money!

If we take 7 million households throughout the country, then replacing only one incandescent bulb in each of them with an energy-efficient one will save 156 million kWh of electricity per year! This amount of electricity is enough to supply 1045 households for a month!

The calculations, which are based on the example of replacing only one bulb, show the fantastic potential of using LED lamps instead of incandescent bulbs, both for saving electricity and for saving on energy bills.

It is clear how much the savings of both electricity and financial costs increase if we analyze this situation on the example of a region or a country.

Since 2015, the relevant legal acts* have prohibited the import of incandescent lamps with a power of more than 40 W, which have a very low efficiency factor, into the territory of Uzbekistan, since July 1, 2016 the production of such lamps has been prohibited, and since January 1, 2017 their sale has been prohibited.

These adopted measures are absolutely in line with the energy efficiency and energy saving policy that is relevant today for Uzbekistan, as well as in general for most countries of the world.However, as inspections show, incandescent lamps, which should have already disappeared from our practice on the background of the measures taken, are still sold in stores, even in modern supermarkets. At the same time, any way of penetration of these products into our country is illegal.

Thus, a legitimate question arises as to where incandescent lamps with a power of more than 40 W come into the country and what allows these non-energy efficient products to still be sold freely on our market.

*PCM No. 299 of 20.10.2015 “On measures to expand domestic production of energy-saving lamps”.