The new nuclear power plant proposed by CPS Energy is creating a major stir in San Antonio. Everyone wants the electric power but no one wants the nuclear power plant in their area. The controversy surrounding the building of the plant has caused CPS to rethink its position and put the new power plant on hold to pursue an alternate solution. Their goal is to reduce the amount of energy consumed in San Antonio by 771 megawatts by the year 2020. CPS has determined 43% of the energy used goes toward powering lights so they are offering rebates to to both residential homes and businesses based on the amount of energy saved by lighting upgrades to help reach their goal.

So how do you benefit the most from an upgrade? Simple, retrofit your lights with Solid State LED lighting. It gives the most energy savings to help you lower your energy usage while saving you money on your electric bill. And I know we all like saving money. LED Lights typically use 88% less energy than incandescent bulbs and 50% less energy than CFLs. A quality LED light produces better illumination than incandescent lights or cfls.

According to the US Census 2000 the population of San Antonio is 1,144,646 with 405,474 households. If every household replaced one 75 watt bulb with one 7 watt LED bulb, the power savings would be 27.5 megawatts. If everyone changed out 10 bulbs to LEDs, the power savings would equal 275 megawatts or 35% of the goal set by CPS and this is just the residential homes.

So why should you care if CPS makes it goal? Consider this, if we can get our power usage to go way beyond the goal set by CPS, how would that affect the need for a Nuclear power plant with a price tag of $17,000,000,000 (17 Billion Dollars). Historically, nuclear power plants do not pay for themselves and have to be bailed out by the taxpayers. That’s our tax dollars being spent and I don’t like my taxes being raised to pay for a bad investment. So why wouldn’t you take advantage of LED lighting technology? It’s everywhere now from Christmas lights to traffic signals. LED Lighting is not a thing of the future, it is available and here now. Just be sure and do your research before buying.

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