LED (GU Halogen) replacement

Garetha

MrsE wrote: »

I think our electric DD is about £80 pm. 3 of us here in a 2 bed house, all out at work all day. Electric cooker but gas water & heating.

Your electricity sounds expensive
Our DD for electricity is £45 / month
electric light & cooking
oil heating
2 of us in 4 bedroom house

MrsE_2

Garetha wrote: »

Your electricity sounds expensive
Our DD for electricity is £45 / month
electric light & cooking
oil heating
2 of us in 4 bedroom house

Our gas is £30 pm.

We've been with BG for a year now (I've just reviewed DDs) & we are £8 in credit after a year with a read meter, so pretty spot on.

The gas was in debit, so I asked them to increase from £21.50 to £30.00.

savemoney

Mrs E you dont use much gas. We pay BG for a family of 4, £42 for gas £54 in electric and I monitor energy levels every month and submit readings

slikt

Ok, now i'm a bit miffed. . I have no idea how much I should be paying. Might just clear the debit and start from fresh, monitoring usage each month and taking readings, plus be a bit more careful with usage in the home, not tight, but dont wanna be giving my hard earned money away!!

basmic

Don't forget they'll be expecting you to build up a credit, for winter.

slikt

basmic wrote: »

Don't forget they'll be expecting you to build up a credit, for winter.

Hmmmmmmmmmm. . .

MrsE_2

savemoney wrote: »

Mrs E you dont use much gas. We pay BG for a family of 4, £42 for gas £54 in electric and I monitor energy levels every month and submit readings

You're using £42 for a family of 4, I'm using £30 for a family of 3 (out at work all day). Its comparrable isn't it?

My electric is silly (us fridge, big TVs:o).

MrsE_2

basmic wrote: »

Don't forget they'll be expecting you to build up a credit, for winter.

Thats why I look at mine annually, to take into account peaks & troughs in usage.

slikt

MrsE wrote: »

You're using £42 for a family of 4, I'm using £30 for a family of 3 (out at work all day). Its comparrable isn't it?

My electric is silly (us fridge, big TVs:o).

So thinking about it, £100pm for all electric is about right then, big TV, silly old hot plate cooker/oven and E7 heating with electric boost (that my other half kept using in the cold snap in march) and electric water heating. . food for thought!!

accountable

gjchester wrote: »

We have three Deltech GU10 5W LED replacements in the kitchen. The only difference over the 50W hlogen is the light is a little bluer in colour, but not so much you'd really worry, they are called cool white, they also do some slightly warmer (read redder) ones.

There are lower powered 1.5W but they would be too dim in the kitchen for us, the 5W put out about the same light as the 50W bulbs they replaced.

First google result is lightonenergy.co.uk/5W-LED-GU10-White-p/gu10-led-5w-white.htm to give you an idea but they are not cheap at £20 a pop... however they are using 10% of the power. Depends how many you have around the house (we have 30+ of the things as the previous owners loved them, so obviously it's an ongoing process to changeover our lights...)

The Deltechs may be £20+ however even their lamp life alone (at 30,000 hours) means you would have to buy 15 halogen GU10's to last as long as one of these LED versions. If the halogen GU10's cost you approx. £2 thats 15 x £2.00 - £30 to light a room for 30,000 hours even with the "cheap" halogen bulbs.

That's before we've started on the energy savings - 90% off! This is where the real savings emerge as energy prices are huge to run a 50W downlight for 30,000 hours. And most people don't just have the one.

On the surface the best LEDs seem expensive, but once you take running costs and lamp life into account the maths really is on their side. They are a great investment.

Interestingly I was testing the 5W Deltech's yesterday against some of the new style 5W LED GU10's which use surface mounted diodes (SMDs) and have to say the 5W deltechs blew them away in performance, they are a very good lamp indeed considering they are not one of the bigger brands such as Philips/Megaman.

The SMD style lamps can promise ultra long life as the LEDs are always kept very cool but the downside is the beam angle can't be controlled so task/surface lighting is virtually non-exsistant. I'd certainly recommend swapping to LEDs - Deltech/Philips/Megaman to replace a 50W Halogen GU10.