Super Energy Efficient LED Light Bulbs
Almost one-fourth of the energy used in homes is used for lighting. Unfortunately, most homes still use the traditional incandescent light bulbs invented by Thomas Edison over 100 years ago! These bulbs convert only about 10 percent of the electricity they use to produce light, the other 90 percent is converted into heat. With new technologies, such as better filament designs and gas mixtures, incandescent bulbs are slightly more efficient than they used to be. In 1879, the average bulb produced only 14 lumens per watt, compared to about 17 lumens per watt today. By adding halogen gases, the efficiency can be increased to 20 lumens per watt. Compact fluorescent light bulbs, or “CFLs”, have made inroads into home lighting systems in the last few years. These bulbs are more expensive to purchase, but last much longer and use much less energy, producing significant savings over the life of the bulb. Compact fluorescent bulbs are over 4 times as efficient as incandescent. For example, a 40 watt incandescent bulb would typically be replaced by a 9 watt compact fluorescent. Compact fluorescent bulbs are not without their own issues, however. The primary drawback of CFL’s is the fact that they contain mercury in them. Break one of these inside your home and you’ll need to have a haz-mat team come in an clean up the mess. Also, while they’re some 4x more efficient than incandescent light bulbs, they’re no where near the top of the heap as far as energy efficiency goes. So, what is the most energy efficient light bulb available for your home? Simple, LED light bulbs.
LED light bulbs are are watt for watt the most energy efficient light bulbs your can purchase for your home. Throw in the fact that they last for 50,000 - 100,000 hours of operation, and changing light bulbs may become a thing of the past. As an example, if you left LED lights on for 12 hours per day, they’d typically last for 25-30 years before they burned out. Most people don’t own their homes that long, so put in a set of these and you might never change them again. Also, as this post is about energy efficiency, LED’s put out an incredible amount of light while using a minuscule amount of energy. LED’s are more than twice as efficient as compact fluorescents and about 10x as energy efficient as incandescent light bulbs. As we try to reduce our production of global warming green house gases, we need to look for the simple things that we can do in our everyday living that can have the biggest effects. Switching to LED light bulbs can cut your home lighting energy use by almost 90%. This is a substantial savings in both money and green house gas emissions.
LED’s aren’t for all types of applications. They are directional lights. ie… they shine in the direction they are pointed in. They don’t shine in all directions as typical incandescent light bulbs do. LED light bulbs are appropriate when you need powerful directional lighting. Presently, LED excels over other bulbs in spot and flood lighting applications. Track lighting, spot lighting, canister lights, and outdoor flood lights are currently the most appropriate places to use LED bulbs. At the moment, if you need general radiant illumination, use energy saving compact fluorescent (CFL) bulbs…but stay tuned for LED replacements of CFLs in the very near future!
LED light bulbs are not currently Energy Star Certified. This will likely change in the not too distant future as these lamps are even more efficient than the current energy star sweet heart, compact fluorescent light bulbs. Look for Starry Night Lights to dramatically expand its energy efficient lighting offerings. This will include both compact fluorescent and LED light bulbs.
This entry was posted on Monday, December 3rd, 2007 at 1:07 am and is filed under LED Light Bulbs, Starry Night Lights, energy star, environment, global warming, green building. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
One Response to “Super Energy Efficient LED Light Bulbs”
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June 6th, 2008 at 7:24 am
Incandescent lamps aren’t anywhere near 10% efficient unless you count infrared as useful output, visible output is closer to 3-5% not 10-20%. CFLs are only about 20% efficient and what light LEDs that are commercially available aren’t substantially better than that. There are LEDs in the lab that approach 100% efficiency (more than 300 lumens/watt) but not in production at present.
The amount of mercury in a CFL hardly would justify a hazmat team and is far less than the old 4-foot long tube fluorescents which used to be disposed of in landfills without a second thought and often broken.
The statement regarding LEDs going 25-30 years before burning out also is somewhat misleading. LEDs rarely fail hard unless some external condition like a shorted ballast resistor causes their failure. Instead, the hours rating refers to the point where they have only 70% of their original brightness. The vast majority will still operate fine after 25-30 years, they’ll just be 30% dimmer.