How much electricity is wasted by leaving lights on?
Q. My husband and I are in conflict over how much it costs to run the lights in our house. As the days grow shorter I like to leave a few lights on in various rooms. But as he makes his way through the house he invariably shuts them off and says we’re “wasting electricity.” Yet our electric bills aren’t very high, and we even have some fluorescent bulbs in some of the table lamps. How much does it cost to run a home’s lights over the period of a month’s time? M.C. Kalamazoo. A. Without knowing how many lights are burning in your home, the size of the bulbs and how long the lights are on each day, it’s impossible to answer your question with any precision. But in general, in most homes, in the overall scheme of things, the portion of the electric bill attributable to lighting is relatively small. Unless you have a large home that has many lights and you leave them on for long periods in many rooms, you aren’t paying much for lighting. That having been said, your husband is accurate when
