How many Whidbey Islanders does it take to change a light bulb? We’ll find out soon. Three exciting events are coming to Oak Harbor this month that will save us money, energy and cut our carbon footprint.

First, Project Porchlight is calling for volunteers to beam out across the city with free CFL bulbs in a neighbor to neighbor campaign. CFL bulbs are best in high use areas like in your kitchen, living room or your porch light. If every person in America replaced one old-fashioned incandescent bulb with a CFL, it would result in an energy savings equivalent to taking 800,000 cars off the road and save you $30 on your power bill over the life of your bulb.

Project Porchlight is a non-profit group that has given away over 2 million CFL bulbs since 2005. They’re coming to Oak Harbor to distribute bulbs on Wednesday, Aug. 5 and Thursday, Aug. 27 from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m., and Saturday, August 15 from 10 a.m. to noon. They’ll organize volunteers at Smith Park and then head out to deliver the goods. You can sign up by calling toll free: 888-362-0363, or email pugetsound@porchlight.org Bring a buddy for a fun night out.

On Saturday and Sunday, Aug. 29-30, Puget Sound Energy is bringing a “Rock the Bulb” event to Ace Hardware. From 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. each day, you can bring up to 10 incandescent light bulbs and exchange them for free CFL bulbs. There’ll be snacks and games and you could enter a contest for an opportunity to win part of $45,000 worth of prizes. Switch over your whole house, or your office, for free.

Since you must be a PSE residential electric customer to participate, it will help if you bring your PSE bill to the event for faster processing, though it is not required.

Walt Blackford, manager of PSE’s Freeland office, said Oak Harbor is the only area of Whidbey Island presently slated for the free bulb offers. “Somebody picked 16 cities, and Oak Harbor is one of them,” he said.

The goal is to give away approximately 5,000 CFL bulbs in the door-to-door campaign. Blackford didn’t know how many bulbs will be brought to Ace Hardware, but he hopes there will be plenty to meet demand. “I assume somebody did some kind of statistical analysis,” he said of PSE’s planning process.

CFL bulbs use 66 to 80 percent less energy and last 6 to 10 times longer than a regular bulb. So for every bulb you switch you’ll save money on your energy bill and on the cost of replacing the bulb. Early on CFL bulbs were expensive, gave off an eerie glow and had a delay before warming up, but recently CFL’s have been improved. There are different styles for different fixtures. There are dimmers and some made for outdoor (cold temperature) use, there’s no longer a delay and they’ve come down in price.

Still some people are hesitant. We’ve heard they contain mercury, but not much. In fact, a CFL bulb contains about one-fifth the mercury found in your watch battery. The largest source of mercury in the environment comes from burning fossil fuels such as coal. A coal burning power plant releases 10 mg of mercury into the environment in order to run an incandescent bulb in comparison to 2.4 mg of mercury to run a CFL bulb for the same length of time. Puget Sound Energy customers get 37 percent of their energy from coal. No mercury is released from the bulb itself unless it’s broken. If you’re concerned about mercury, switch to CFL bulbs.

For more information and a list of all tour dates and locations, visit rockthebulb.com, PSE.com, or call 1-888-362-0363.