Which would be more energy efficiant: turning on and off lights or leaving them on?

Question

I heard one time that is uses a lot more energy to turn lights on and off, so my question is, how long do lights have to be left off to make it worth turning them off?

Answer 1

Turn your lights on as you need them, turn them off as you don't.This saves you money and the world energy.

If you are the type of person who uses lights a good ammount of time a day. I would reccomend energy saving lightbulbs, witch can be bought at Wal-Mart. Or getting more natural light in the house,witch would be even better. Glad To Help! And remember GO GREEN!

Answer 2

Turning them off and on as you leave and enter rooms is best. The amount of 'start-up' energy required for lights - whether incandescent or fluorescent - is so small that it really makes no difference (I think that the amount of time to make turning off the lights less efficient is something like 2 seconds). That being said, it would be far less an environmental-crime to leave them on while you go do something in another room if most - if not all - of the light bulbs in your home were CFLs (compact fluorescents - the twisty ones that use 75% less energy than the old-fashioned tungsten incandescent bulbs). Switching ALL of the bulbs in your home can even save you upwards of $50 a year on your energy bill.

Answer 3

OFF is the most energy efficient.  But if you need them on quite often, keep them on.  It uses more electricity to turn them on and off and on and off etc

Answer 4

First the lights should be CFL's

Second leaving the lights off is the most every efficient.

Answer 5

They did that on Mythbusters and concluded that it's more energy-efficient to turn off the lights.

Answer 6

if u r leaving the room for more than 15 min then turn them off

it saves electricity