LED lights are much more efficient than traditional incandescent bulbs, slightly more efficient than compact florescent (with much less mercury!), and have recently really dropped in price.<\/p>\n
I just purchased a six pack of 11 watt LED bulbs designed to replace 65 watt flood lights for $27. When lit, together they use 66 watts. (And light up the kitchen better!)<\/p>\n
Compared to the 390 watts used by the incandescent bulbs they replaced, this is a savings of 324 watts. \u00a0 \u00a0 If they are lit for three hours a day the savings is substantial; 972 watt hours, or almost one kWh! \u00a0 If we pretend the average cost of electricity is 0.10 a kWh (it’s actually closer to 0.117 for me) this works out to paying for the light bulbs in energy savings in less than a year (270 days!). \u00a0 \u00a0 As long as the bulbs last for at least 810 hours, they have paid for themselves. (The rated life on the package claims 25,000 hours)<\/p>\n
If we conservatively pretend the bulbs will only last 10,000 hours (9 years at 3 hours a day), they will continue to save \u00a0 324 watts x 9190 hours after they have paid for themselves. This works out to 2,977 kWh, or $297 worth of electricity. \u00a0 Not a bad return on investment for $27 of sunk costs.<\/p>\n
In summary, it’s time to replace any incandescent bulbs you have with LED’s. (You may as well wait for the CF bulbs to burn out before you replace them.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
LED lights are much more efficient than traditional incandescent bulbs, slightly more efficient than compact florescent (with much less mercury!), and have recently really dropped in price. I just purchased a six pack of 11 watt LED bulbs designed to … Continue reading