Building Ecotopia: Living without Electricity, Part 5

by Chuck Hall

About the only major electricity-using device that we haven’t covered yet is lighting. There are several approaches to dealing with lighting in an electricity-free home. For daytime lighting needs, you can always make strategic use of skylights. Even on cloudy days, skylights can supplement your lighting needs. Until recently, skylights were a problem for homes with more than one floor; however, a new product is being researched that would use fiber optics to redirect sunlight to the lower floors of a multi-story building. In these units, a solar collector reflects sunlight into a bundle of fiber optics. This bundle terminates on the ceiling of an interior floor. The sunlight is conducted by the fiber optics to a fixture placed over the end of the bundle. The fixture functions to diffuse the light evenly. The problem so far with these systems is that the sun has to be at the proper angle for them to work at all. One approach to solving this problem to add a motor-driven reflector to track the sun as it moves across the sky. The motor would be solar powered as well, so no external energy source would be required. The problem with any sort of sunlight-driven system is that it will only work during daylight hours, so if you need lighting in the evenings, you’ll have to come up with an alternative plan.
An approach that lies halfway between candles and regular incandescent bulbs in terms of electricity requirements is compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs). CFLs still require electricity, but at a fraction of the cost of an incandescent. A 15-watt CFL produces as much light as a 100-watt incandescent! Recent modifications in design have vastly improved the CFLs of today. If you’ve used CFLs in the past and set them aside because of the harsh light and short life, now’s the time to try them again. I switched my home lighting to CFLs almost a year ago, and I haven’t had to replace a bulb yet. Not only that, but the lighting is indistinguishable from the incandescent bulbs I previously used, at a fraction of the energy cost. While the up-front cost for CFLs is more, savings over the life of the lamp can be between $35 and $80 or even more.
If you intend to use a CFL in a dimmer switch, be sure that it is dimmer compatible. If it doesn’t specify ‘dimmer compatible’ on the package, it can’t be used with a dimmer switch. Don’t attempt to dim a CFL that isn’t rated dimmer-compatible. Dimmer switches work by varying the amount of voltage supplied to the lamp. Each CFL has its own ballast that regulates the voltage going to the bulb, so using a non-dimmable CFL will overwork the ballast as it tries to supply a steady level of voltage to the lamp. So, using a CFL not dimmer-compatible could greatly shorten the life of the bulb. While some varieties of CFL will dim to a limited degree, the range is nowhere near as great as that of a dimmable CFL.
CFLs still need electricity in order to operate, so if you’re planning a totally electricity-free lifestyle, they’re not for you. I mention them here for those of you who want to minimize electricity use, but aren’t ready to do without electricity completely. If you are trying to minimize your electricity use so that a solar, wind, or other alternative energy source is more viable and affordable, or if you’re just trying to decrease your monthly power bill, CFLs might be a wise lighting choice for you. If, however, you are striving to be a purist, and wish to live completely without electricity, there are still a few lighting options. We’ll examine those options next week.