If you knew your electric rate, then you could make an informed decision if replacing your light bulbs with LEDs would save you money. Otherwise, its not possible to make an informed decision.
AGAIN....my bill is low enough I dont care. Im not worried about saving 95 cents a month. I throw that out as loose change in the driveway. My average bill is less than $50 here and $5.00 on the island. In case you missed it, I DONT care what an LED bulb saves me. I buy regular bulbs for a quarter, and burn out 3-4 a year. I can afford that. When I cant, ill use my hurricane lamps.
After looking in more detail the bulbs that dies they are non-dimmable untits so they are simple LED bulbs. At 8.5 cents per kWH I really don't give a crap between incandescent, flourescent and LED. Heck my hottub doubles my electric rate so a few cents for a bulb don't make or break. I replaced the buld with more lights of america LED's from Wally World since I had a few on hand; time will tell how long they last.
Just so I don't sound like a person who hogs electric I am very happy with the heat pump water heater that I installed last year. The switch to the heat pump style did save about $15 a month on my bill.
If you live where hitting the top $.32/kWH tier only requires pugging in a cell phone charger and your wife loves lights, the LEDs have proven to be very cost effective. I've dropped my $130 bill to $100 by going with LEDs alone. That's a payback of about a year. If your power costs are low like in Washington state they might not payback in a reasonable amount of time.
Now if they would only come up with an LED AC unit!
Assming of course, that the 'bulb' lasts for a year, which I found not to be the case with CFLs. My only experience with LED lighting has been positive so far, but the 2 fixtures were very expensive compared to incandescent fixtures and bulbs--over $100 each. It will take quite a while to recoup that initial outlay from energy savings. It would have been much less expensive to go with traditional incandescent, even if I had to use a solar panel/12v battery down at my dock, and I would have about the same light output, if not more. I just wanted to try the LED lights out in the most harsh environment first before again trying something new in the approx 20+ light fixtures inside my home. Cost per hr is not an issue--reliability is. Nothing irritates us more than to hear a noise outside, and flick on the porch light, only to have to wait for the CFL to warm up--assuming it comes on at all.
Just so I don't sound like a person who hogs electric I am very happy with the heat pump water heater that I installed last year. The switch to the heat pump style did save about $15 a month on my bill.
You can use as much as you can pay for as far as I'm concerned
Originally posted by maryjane: Nothing irritates us more than to hear a noise outside, and flick on the porch light, only to have to wait for the CFL to warm up--assuming it comes on at all.
One thing about CFLs - not sure about LEDs - is that they put a lot more UV light than a regular incandescent. This attracts bugs in outdoor fixtures like crazy. You almost have to use the yellow-tinted CFLs if you want to use them outside and not have a pile of dead bugs inside the fixture.
One thing about CFLs - not sure about LEDs - is that they put a lot more UV light than a regular incandescent. This attracts bugs in outdoor fixtures like crazy. You almost have to use the yellow-tinted CFLs if you want to use them outside and not have a pile of dead bugs inside the fixture.
I use 100 watt incandescent bulbs in my barns. What am I supposed to do when I can't get them anymore? At 10 feet up and without white walls and ceilings for reflection, I need to throw as much light as possible. I also need them to work in the winter- especially in the winter- when it gets dark at 4:00 PM. I also need them to come on instantly. CFL's won't work. Will LED's do that?
On a side note: I have 3 Great Value CFL's base up in my wet, 124 year old limestone basement. They get turned on and off almost every day, and sometimes stay on for hours when I'm working on something down there. They have been working fine for over three years like this, but they do take a few minutes to come up to full brightness. I also have a Philips CFL hanging base up in a ceiling fan in the laundry room. It's a crappy fan that vibrates a lot, and it has worked fine for about 3 years, also. It sees intermittent use as well. It also takes a while to warm up.
I use 100 watt incandescent bulbs in my barns. What am I supposed to do when I can't get them anymore? At 10 feet up and without white walls and ceilings for reflection, I need to throw as much light as possible. I also need them to work in the winter- especially in the winter- when it gets dark at 4:00 PM. I also need them to come on instantly. CFL's won't work. Will LED's do that?
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LEDs will work cold, bright ones may be expensive but they have them.
I use 100 watt incandescent bulbs in my barns. What am I supposed to do when I can't get them anymore? At 10 feet up and without white walls and ceilings for reflection, I need to throw as much light as possible. I also need them to work in the winter- especially in the winter- when it gets dark at 4:00 PM. I also need them to come on instantly. CFL's won't work. Will LED's do that?
LEDs are full bright when turned on, they don't have to warm up.
GE makes a hybrid bulb, one with a halogen bulb AND a CFL combined into one package that provides instant-on, but the price is about the same as LED so it doesn't seem worth it.
The problem with most LEDs is not in the LEds themselves, but the cheap (chinese!) power supply. 99.8% of the time it's the power supply that burns out. Many times it will take out the LED with it.
I'm going to have to try those 100W equivalent CREE @ home depot. Looks promising!
I just received the LED Panel lights with a housing on them this week. I installed two of them in my kitchen and they are really impressive. I have an app on my cell phone that measures light output. The app reads out in lumens, but I don't trust the actual reading, but it is good for comparison. I tonight compared a 65 watt Fluorescent Twist bulb to the LED Panel light. The twist bulb read 400 on my cell phone app and the 18 watt LED panel light read 380. Not too shabby at all. The LED panel light is a bright white at 6000K or so and the twist bulb is about 4500K, so there is a difference in color of light.
My cell phone camera is broke or I would put pictures on line. I should have it replaced in a couple of days and I will post pictures then. These lights are easy to install with the way they are built. You pull down the old fixture and then screw the new fixture frame to the ceiling over the box. Hook up the two power wires. Plug in the output side of the power supple. Slide the housing over the frame and you are done. The one thing is that the holes don't match up with the electrical box so I just used the screws provided to screw it onto the drywall.
I don't know if I want to try to import and sell these new lights or not. I am really going for the industrial lighting like I talked about in my first post. Those new LED Panel Lights should be in by the end of next week. Then we will be making up some fixtures for them and taking them to plants and electrical supply companies to market them. They will have 7 LED Panel lights in each fixture rated at 24 watts and 2400 lumens each. I can't wait to see how much these lights will put out and how well they will sell.
I have some CFL's that have been in use close to ten years. The ones that failed did so catastrophically. I will go all in for LED lights when they drop in price. But it should be a choice and the laws against light bulbs are absurd.
I've always wondered if a lifetime warranty placed the buyer on a hit list.
I think you can still buy 100 watt bulbs for an egg incubator.
Lifetime warranties on anything are great. Usually they require you to have a printed reciept. They count on you not keeping it, I mean how many people have the reciept for the light bulb they bought 5 years ago. If that dont work, they make sure they print the reciept on paper that the ink fades completely off of in a few years. Ive got a drawer full of reciepts and part of them are just blank pieces of register paper.
Most of the receipts I have that are over a few months old have faded so much that they are unreadable. I keep all my farm related receipts in a file cabinet and folders and at years end, my tax guy still pulls his hair out trying to read what my expenses were. Pretty sure the IRS would toss all of them. I believe the retailers do this on purpose--use very cheap ink and paper to print it on so you won't be tempted to return anything.
Most of the receipts I have that are over a few months old have faded so much that they are unreadable. I keep all my farm related receipts in a file cabinet and folders and at years end, my tax guy still pulls his hair out trying to read what my expenses were. Pretty sure the IRS would toss all of them. I believe the retailers do this on purpose--use very cheap ink and paper to print it on so you won't be tempted to return anything.
Not sure it's intention. Cheap ink and paper saves money. I finally started copying and scanning any thermal receipts. Some of the thermal receipts don't last 3 months!
[This message has been edited by TK (edited 05-17-2014).]
