In a developing country like Nigeria, the most commonly used bulbs in homes are incandescent bulbs, and that's apparently due to their low cost. A 100W incandescent bulb sells for as low as N200 and there's no denying, that's the most attractive lighting option to an average population.
But unfortunately, the low price is where the advantage ends, an incandescent bulb consumes a lot of precious power on the long run.
An average two-bedroom apartment has about 10 major bulb points, in which if entirely powering incandescent bulbs, the overall consumption over time would be enormous for only lighting, compared to the size of the house. Let's get to the maths!
Using a 60W bulb as a case study (for being the most common) 60W in 10 places gives us 600W, assuming lights are on for 7 hours everyday , that means that house uses 4,200Wh in a day alone, that in 30 places means 126,000Wh in a month, which can be simplified as 126KWh.
This can still be further simplified as 126 units, as the power company sells power in KWhs.
The cost per unit KWh depends on the power company but using Ikeja Electric as a case study, at the time of this writing, Ikeja Electric gives approximately 17 units for N1,000.
So if Ikeja Electric supplies the house above, it will spend approximately N7,500 a month on lights alone. Huge!
But replacing all these incandescent bulbs with LED bulbs would have a far reaching effect, if the bulbs in that house were all replaced with 10W LED bulbs, lighting the house would be six times or 83% cheaper, meanwhile for a higher brightness.
This would definitely in the future make large scale solar power generation for cities' consumption more achievable.