On the average, every household spends about one percent of its income on electricity. Some of these expenses are understandably inevitable. Boiling water to serve tea in the morning, keeping the refrigerator on while away in the afternoon for food preservation, and laying back to watch the news at 9:00PM, are only a few must-do rituals of every urbanite, and as such cannot be discouraged against in a bid to save energy cost.

However, needless are some seemingly small energy expenditures incurred by city families. Who would have thought that simply switching off one security bulb from 7 in the morning to 7 at night could significantly reduce family spending on electricity?

A security light turned off during the day has a potential to help save N1.25 per hour, N14.94 every day, and N448.20 month-in-month-out. Now, considering that many households have at least three security lights around the home, it can therefore be concluded that savings in the values of N3.74 per hour, N44.82 per day and N1344.60 per month could be made given PHCN’s N12.45/KWh basis.

Considering a household with three (3) security lights of 100W each.

PHCN charge for 1 kWh = N12.45

Total wattage for three (3) bulbs – 100W each = 300W or 0.3kW

If these bulbs are left on for 1 hour, the cost of power consumed = 0.3kW *1h *N12.45 = N3.74

Such bulbs would incur a 24 hour cost of N3.74 * 24 = N89.76 per day

Scaling up to a month period gives N89.76*30 = N2,692.80 per month

Therefore, those bulbs, if switched off for half a day (7:00 AM – 7:00 PM) would have helped save half of N2,692.80. That is, N1,346.40.
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What can N1344.60 buy? Quite a number of consumables every family pays for a monthly basis – a carton of tissue paper, water bills or one Blackberry Internet Subscription (BIS) for a member of the family.

Freeing up electrical loads at periods when they are not needed is therefore not much of a good to the government than it is to the consumer. It offers a win-win situation for everyone, more so for a country like Nigeria, in making proper distribution plans to avoid “wastage”.

For example, Lagos, today, receives about 900 MW (according to Nigeria System Operator) from the national grid, if an area (say Alapere) gets 60 MW with all security bulbs on at day-time, same area could make do with (say) 52 MW with all security bulbs off at day time. As such, the excess 8 MW could be channeled to casinos whose business depends solely on 2-4-7 electricity.

Source: http://go.engineer-ng.net/profiles/blogs/switch-off-three-bulbs-save-up-for-monthly-bis