Over the last few weeks, I’ve been doing some serious investigating. Think Sherlock without the drug use and brainpower.

Energy saving light bulb giants OSRAM, challenged me to switch all of my standard light bulbs to fancy new energy saving ones, to see if I’d save any cash.

The thing is, people are super confused about light bulbs. We tend not to think about them until one dies and you have to replace it, so a) don’t know how much they are costing you, and b) don’t know what type/size you should buy.

Yeah, 42% of us (and I’m so included in this stat!) have bought a lightbulb that didn’t actually fit.

The challenge

Ok, so I was sent an energy monitor which is basically the best thing in the world. I assumed these things were hundreds of pounds, but the one I have is £35 and is brilliant.

It highlights exactly what each item you’re using is costing you (the washing machine – ouch!). And you can see the energy cost in £, CO2 or kWh. I’d highly recommend it.

The first week, I set up the energy monitor with the standard light bulbs I was using. As you can see from the pictures my energy consumption came to £4.67.

I don’t actually know how that compares to other people. I live in a one bed flat, and there’s only two of us living here (although I’m here all the time), so I suspect that’s pretty low.

After that, I got my boyfriend to change all the light bulbs to energy saving LEDs and monitored the activity.

Well, I was pretty confident it was going to be less – because *science*, but that second week only cost £2.33. That’s a really big difference.

We didn’t do anything different, in fact, my sister and her kids came to stay, so there was probably a bit more use.

So there you go – pretty convincing eh? Have you made the switch yet? How much does your electricity cost (is mine cheap)? Let me know in the comments.