Some Benefits
To know what actual benefits you stand to gain you need to know just 3 things. And none if it is the ACTUAL energy price. (In fact, shortly you will see that you won't need to know that, because your LED bulb will use the same - already high priced - electricity.)
energy use of a LED replacement bulb vers. your regular bulb
price of a LED light bulb vers. your current regular bulb
Number of regular bulbs used for the lifetime of one LED bulb
None of these need actual absolute prices -- instead, they are ratios. You don't even need to factor in the soaring prices of electricity. Why you ask? Good question. But think about it for a moment: - You will pay the SAME DOLLAR PER KILOWATT for both. In other words, just by buying one over the other, the price of power sold to you by your current utility provider won't change. (Well, not unless they too replace their regular bulbs and light up their plants with LED light themselves;-) - but that is another kettle of fish entirely.)
Ok, let's see those ratios in order:
Today, a LED replacement bulb will use about 97% less energy than your current incandescent light.
Price of LED bulb is about 52 times higher than your regular bulb
You will replace up to 60 regular incandescent bulbs in the socket - one after the other - for the same time ONE LED light bulb can last.
Now that we collected all that data how are we going to calculate the actual gain? Well, we can calculate it in break-even time on your investment of buying a LED replacement bulb. And we can calculate the actual costs you need to fork out to buy and run both.
Ok, today I've ran these calculations based on a simple break even formula I worked out for the purpose. And the results are staggering. Ready? After investing in a LED bulb, you will break even in less then 8 months. And after that you will pocket the gains for up to 7 years. How is that for benefit?
But using the same formula I also ran calculations for a future point in a current trend as power prices rise and LED prices drop. Now, as this happens as we speak, you stand to gain even more by shrinking break-even time to around 2 months at some point.
After that I became curious and ran a step-by-step cost calculation based on my formula. And the results were even more staggering.
Now then, haven't we forgotten something ...?
Well, how about less tangible benefits, such as quality of enjoyment you would be hard pressed to put a price on; - such as significantly less heat at the light source? Well, actually that too can have a price tag -- just much harder to calculate. Why?
Your current regular bulb uses power to make 80-90% heat and at best 15% light. That heat needs to be vented. And on a hot day, that ACTUALLY adds to your air-conditioning bill. It's just hard to know how much exactly. But if you look back at the differences in energy efficiency between a LED replacement bulb and a regular bulb, you see a figure of 97% percent. (That's actually a generous average.) The 2-12% difference is in fact somewhat larger, when you count that a regular bulb throws light in a spherical fashion - comes from the centre of the bulb and goes in every direction along with the heat just mentioned. -- In most of those places they are a waste and not needed at all. By contrast, a LED light bulb only throws a narrow light beam directed exactly where needed.
There are other issues also that will make the pay-off equally more enjoyable and more recycle-friendly, but this would be hard to discuss in the framework of just this short article. And of course you can't use LED bulbs just everywhere - not yet.
But the bottom line? When you count the beans in the kitty, you will stand to gain BIG time with investing in a LED replacement bulb for accents, flood lights, washers and for every other use where appropriate.
