[freedogger]

Family of four, lots of laundry, 2003 appliances. About 2000 sq foot. Averaged 850 kWh for three months with Bow Valley Power's fixed rate at 6.5c for a monthly bill around $126.00.

After seeing this thread, I got off my but and did the following:

1) Installed phillips 4 watt and 8 watt LED from home depot througought the house. 25 year lifespan, looks and feels like a 40 watt or 60 watt regular bulb.
2) In garage and basement, I left the regular 100 watt bulbs in and put motion sensors that screw into the socket and then the bulbs into those.
3) In bathrooms, laundry room, two closets and the garage entrance way I installed motion activated light switches from Home Depot.
4) we have 3 $12 motion activated night lights that plug into electrical sockets at key places too.

The motion sensors trigger only with humans, Our dog and cat don't set them off. Pretty convenient. My entire house is lit wherever I walk now. For the kitchen or other main usage areas, if we are in the room for any length of time, we manually turn on the main room's lights. The lights are all set to go off after a minute with no activity. Best of all no more nagging of the kids and myself to remember to turn off lights.

Total cost: $1550. Installed it all myself which took an afternoon.

After one month, here's the stats with the same Bow Valley Power rates:
599 kWh for $90.00 bucks. Saved $36 and will pay off the investment in about 3 1/2 years. $9300 will be saved at today's rates over the expected lifetime of the bulbs.

In hindsight, I could have avoided buying about 8 of the Philips bulbs where the motion lights are and saved about $250.00 and pay slightly more every month.

I could easily swap back in the old bulbs and the switches if we ever move.