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“If you plug in just one 1200 watt space heater you are using as much power as 20 sixty watt bulbs or 10 amps roughly.”

A hair dryer will use that much too for the brief time you use it. I never use space heaters. I also don't ever have 20 sixty watt bulbs burning in my house at any one time. I have replaced most of my bulbs with compact fluorescent bulbs and it does save me a few dollars a month, enough that I've more than paid for the new bulbs with what I've saved on my electric bill. I think they are a really good deal if you try to buy them on sale. They pay for themselves in a pretty short time if you replace lights you leave on a lot. I've actually cut my electric bill pretty substantially, but I've done a lot more than just replace light bulbs that have burned out. I found close to three hundred watts of phantom power I was losing with things I left on all the time and things that stay in standby mode and waiting for someone to click a remote control to turn them all the way on. Three hundred watts on 24 hours a day is as much power as you'd burn with a 1200 watt space heater on six hours a day. That's about $20 a month with power going for nine cents a kilowatt hour saved by turning things off and putting other things on power strips that I turn on when I need them. Getting rid of some inefficient light fixtures helped to. The cheesy candelabra in the room I'm in now used to burn 360 watts when it was turned all the way up, and it lit the ceiling a lot better than it lit the room. The fixture we have now burns 69 watts and seems to light the room a lot better. Every little bit helps. It's not that hard for most people to shave $30 or more from their monthly electric bill.

I burn about 900-1000 watts outside. Far more than I do inside as I only have a total of about a dozen light fixtures inside. I took down most fixtures and replaced them with basic good old fashioned single bulb porcelain fixtures to handle the 100 watt bulbs. My inside replacement bulb bill runs about $6 a year tops. I have some flood lights that are several years old outside. I wish I could say the same for the 300 watt quartz bulbs but I get my moneys worth there too. All outside lights are on a timer or light sensor. I use that much light in warm weather so I don't step on a Copperhead. Been there nearly done that and nice bright lights went up real fast. LOL In the winter I scale back on the outside lights somewhat though.

If the power company is running a customer right on the upper limit on voltage the CF lights are not going to last a long time no matter what a person does. Power surge and voltage spikes will take them out as the starter components {ballast} are electronic. Also the closer you live to a substation has a little bit to do with it as well as those houses take the brunt of such. That is where an incandescent has a little bit of advantage. They usually don't blow except in turning them on.

I'm a retired Maintenance Mechanic with Electrical and HVAC background. That's how I caught on to what my power company was doing. I became suspicous when too many things were wearing out too fast. They were the same morons who when I called them and told them their Neutral Primary was laying on the ground said Oh it's OK it won't hurt anything. Yea right. The Neutral loose or broken can kill you as quick if not quicker than the hot especially if you become it's conductor to ground.