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I replaced every bulb in my house with either CFL or LED. I have like 30 can lights in my house, both upstairs and down. I have LEDs in probably 24 of them, the other 6 CFLs. In lamps and closets and whatever else, we have a mix of CFL or LED; depending on when the bulb was last replaced. Several years ago, I stocked up on CFLs that were a great price at Costco. I have been using them as replacements over time. However, now when I buy new bulbs, they are exclusively LED - with the exception of outdoor light bulbs. Then, I buy whatever is rated to work in -20°F weather. We don't get that cold here too often, but it does get below 0°F much of January. The LED bulbs produce a wonderful light spectrum. We cannot tell the difference between them and the incandescent light bulbs that we used previously. The power consumption difference is stark. The incandescent bulbs used 75W per bulb. The LEDs were like 8W or 13W, something like that. They're equally bright. I have not had to replace any of my indoor LED bulbs in probably 2 years of using them. Meanwhile, I routinely replace the CFL bulbs as they fail. The LEDs I bought claim to have a 20 year warranty, but nobody saves the original packaging, receipts, etc. I couldn't even tell you what brand they are, though I would guess Philips. Outdoors, I have a bunch of low-voltage landscaping lighting. I think there are 12 lights on my property, all aiming at my house or trees or whatever. I replaced the halogen lights (each used 20W) with LED bulbs (each use 3W). I can run my entire system on less power than 2 of the halogen bulbs that came with these lights. The LED colors produced are just what I want, so they are great in that regard. However, I have had to replace 3 or 4 of them in about 2 years. These lights are supposed to be sealed by a rubber gasket from rain/snow/whatever. I suspect that water gets in and fries them. As for an overall cost savings, I calculated it at the time. When I bought my bulbs, the upfront money was something like $250. To get that kind of a return, based on the power consumption estimate of $0.12/kWh, it was going to take about 14 months. Overall, I would recommend replacing as many lights as you can afford with LEDs. To me, they have proven to be reliable and much cheaper than the alternatives.
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Dec 20, 2015 04:23
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B33rChiller posted:Is that 14 months worth of your typical usage, or is that 14 months of cumulative run time? Normal usage. It would take less time now than when I did it to make up the difference in power savings, as LEDs are cheaper. I did not consider using incandescent bulbs in the summer and the heat they generate into these savings. +95% of the power incandescent lights consume is wasted as heat. In the summer, this means you have to pay extra to cool off that extra heat. In the winter, it slightly alleviates the amount of work your furnace must do to keep your house warm. Where I live, we get hot summers and cold winters, so the energy savings in that regard is essentially a wash. If you live in Arizona, where you almost exclusively use your A/C, you would see even quicker payoff times yet.
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Dec 22, 2015 06:59
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B33rChiller posted:I don't really trust the concept of incandescent bulbs carrying the heating load. Sure, they do heat the air, but you need to consider the location of the light bulb. A lot of the bulbs are going to be up near (or sunk into) the ceiling. You just end up with a layer of hot air up near the ceiling, while the air down near your thermostat stays cool. Your kilowatt chandelier isn't going to heat your room as efficiently as a kilowatt baseboard heater, or a space heater on the floor, where the heated air has to rise through the space, mixing and heating the rest of the air, rather than stagnating near the heat source. I can provide an anecdote that was a factor for me switching to LED. In my kitchen, I have a total of 10 flood lights. Previously, they were all 75W incandescent bulbs. When we had all 10 of those lights on, that room would heat up more than the rest of the house (even without the stove or oven turn on). Most personal space heaters are in the range of 800-1500W - so running all those bulbs was, power-wise, equivalent to running a small space heater on max. Even with the bulbs in the ceiling, flood lights direct the light in 1 direction. You could feel the warmth projecting out from each bulb. It may not have been exactly the heat produced as would have been by a small space heater, but there was heat produced. Pilsner posted:
I'm not saying it's apples to apples as far as the heat produced by incandescent bulbs goes. I'm just saying that it's another factor that, depending on your geography, will influence the payoff time for switching to LED bulbs. johnny sack fucked around with this message at 16:20 on Dec 22, 2015 |
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Dec 22, 2015 15:51
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silence_kit posted:You are probably paying more per Joule of heat to heat your house with lightbulbs than by burning natural gas in your furnace, though. Nobody is saying otherwise.
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Dec 22, 2015 17:40
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