Energy Saving LED Home Lighting

A straightforward guide to understanding, purchasing, installing & benefiting from energy saving LED home lighting.

Domestic LED lighting is still seen as something of a novelty & plenty of people don't understand whats involved, where to make use of energy saving LED lighting, how to make use of domestic LED lights or what the issues are regarding installing low energy light bulbs.

It is hard to see how a domestic LED replacement light that costs plenty of times over the ordinary light bulbs you have always bought before could possibly save you money. But think it will save a fortune & sooner than you might think.



For a start there is the cost, which puts plenty of people off straight away because what they  definitely don't yet understand about low energy lighting is that when comparing an ultra low energy LED light bulb with a traditional incandescent bulb or even an energy saving CFL light bulb they are not comparing like with like.

The fact is that even at today's fuel prices you will save substantial sums of money by replacing existing domestic lighting systems with low energy LED home lighting options. The following table gives a clue as to how much saving is feasible from LED compared to CFL & incandescent lighting.
Type     Wattage     Total Lumens     Lifespan Hours     Annual Energy Cost     Cost Over four Years
Incan.     60W              840                  1,000                     8.00                           1200.00
CFL        11W              770                  8,000                    1.45                             217.50
LED         5W              625                  50,000                    0.40                              60.00

Part of the reason is not only the energy saving that home LED lighting brings, but that word replacement replacing conventional, halogen & so-called low-energy CFL bulbs with genuinely ultra low energy domestic LED lamps means basically you don't must replace light bulbs on a regular basis because the lifespan of most LED lamps on sale today is a staggering 50,000 (or more) times that of a regular incandescent light bulb.

Irrespective of how closely the actual costs match your own circumstances, you can clearly see that LED light bulbs are  four times cheaper to run than CFLs as well as a gigantic twenty times cheaper than incandescent light bulbs.

Energy costs are based on the standard approximation of 10p per kWh, with average usage of four hours per day for a modest relatives home with 30 light bulbs.

That is without factoring in the increased lifespan which means that even when comparing purchase prices, any LED that is less than 50 times more expensive than its incandescent counterpart actually works out cheaper in terms of purchase costs .

As the future brings ever rising energy & thus electricity prices, due to the remorseless effects of supply & demand, the arguments for switching to energy saving domestic LED lighting become ever more compelling.

The reason is simple: economics & survival in a brand spanking new age of global warming & energy crises the lighting industry is being forced to adopt effective energy saving lighting solutions, which means that you, me & everybody else is also about to be forced to adopt energy saving lighting namely domestic LED lighting.

Not only are domestic LED lights becoming quickly ever more powerful & versatile, they are also dropping massively in cost. Thats for a simple reason, namely that domestic LED is the future of lighting. The major corporations in the lighting industry are all betting their businesses on LED home lighting & moving away from both regular incandescent & CFL low energy or energy saving light bulbs.

This is even before you factor in the environmental cost in terms of waste heat, CO2 output & disposal. The lifespan of incandescent bulbs is less than 2% that of LED lamps & in the case of CFLs (Compact Fluorescent Lamps), which still last only about 10% as long, there is the added issue that they contain highly poisonous mercury vapor & must be disposed of in a controlled manner. Between legislative push & technological pull, the conclusion is inescapable: domestic LED lighting is coming to a home near you, actual soon.

Not only that, but plenty of governments are also actively engaged in phasing out conventional light bulbs, some as soon as only a couple of years hence. The energy (& hence actual money) costs of both manufacturing &, literally, burning traditional light bulbs is becoming prohibitive to all concerned.