So I was thinking today, after looking at all the things happening in South Africa due to the fact that there is probably no-one working at Eskom (since things in South Africa just seems to work on their own without needing maintenance and upgrading), what it will actually cost to use candles instead of light bulbs.
Lets do a bit of math:
Cost of Electricity Calculation
An average 60 Watt incandescent light bulb will cost you about R16 (source here) and will last about 1500 hours (estimate). So the cost per hour is about 1c. The electricity price of running this light bulb for an hour can be calculated as follows:
Electricity Unit price = R0.9568/KWatt/h (from your latest electricity bill)
60 Watt/h x 0.9568/1000/h = about 5c/h.
So the total cost for running an average 60 Watt light bulb is about 6c per hour…
Interestingly, using the same calculation with a R130 10W LED light bulb @37 500 hours from the same source will cost less than 1c/h to run.
And the price of electricity in 2006 was R0.35/KWatt/h.
The average pillar household candle is about 24cm long. I had a locally manufactured brand that said it was long lasting, but there were no time indicated anywhere. The internet say that the average candle will burn for about 7 hours so let’s use that. A pack of 6 was about R12 if I recall correctly. So 12/6 gives us R2 per candle.
So a candle burning for 7 hours cost about 28c per hour…
The fact that you will need many more candles to produce the same amount of light than a 60 Watt bulb means that candles are actually much more expensive than electricity.
In Conclusion
I honestly though it would be much cheaper burn a candle, but I suppose this is just one more way that the people of South Africa are getting crewed by their current government. Please comment below.
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