LED Lightbulbs - Realistic Savings?

vi123

Hello, has anyone got any experience with LED lightbulbs in the home?

I used the energy calculator on click4leds.co.uk (you need to download the Excel spreadsheet from the homepage) and apparently kitting out my house with LED bulbs (8 bulbs) would save £179.67 a year over normal bulbs! Are these figures realistic do you think?

Many thanks

Andy_WSM

It would depend entirely upon how long you use each of the lights for and what type of bulb you are using currently. "Normal bulbs" likely means Filament bulbs at 60W or 100W and it's unlikely many people are still using them over compact flourescent bulbs anyway, which only consume 11W or so.

Smiley_Dan

You also have to consider the capital cost... for this and Andy's reason I have only converted those lights in my house that are on for longer than, say, 1hr a day. When the others die, I'll replace them with LEDs.

Also, in the case of low voltage lights, you will probably need new transformers (might be better just to replace with mains voltage unless in the bathroom/kitchen/humid place) and also new dimmer switches. I think sometimes you can get away without that.

Still, a nice DIY job. They do consume a *lot* less energy. The best replacements are for halogen downlighters which are typically 35-50w. If you have a few of those in your kitchen/bathroom/anywhere it can soon add up.

lstar337

I replaced my GU10 down lights with LED, 8 lights at 400W, now 8 lights at 40W. But they cost me £120! So quite a long payback.

The rest of the house (excluding front room where I have a Lifx bulb) I did with low power CFL's, 6 lights at 360W, now 6 lights at 54W (9W, 400lm each) and only cost £5.10 (85p each).

My CFL's will pay off a lot faster than the LED's, so that is something to consider.

2013yearofthehouse

I did some calculations when we switched ours and estimated we'd save somewhere between £50 and £100 a year depending on how accurately I was guessing at the number of hours we have certain lights on (quite difficult to be accurate because of variations in activity and time of year) so it was more a "worst case / best case" scenario and the reality does fall within the upper of that range. The bulbs cost a total of £90 so well worth it I think (payback of a year or so). Obviously if you are switching from older 60w bulbs you'll save a lot more than if you already have some 11-14w CFLs. We switched from a mixture of 60w and 13w (some not very good quality, free CFLs, that took ages to reach a decent level of light) to 9w/4w LEDs.

wavelets

vi123 wrote: »

Hello, has anyone got any experience with LED lightbulbs in the home?

I used the energy calculator on click4leds.co.uk (you need to download the Excel spreadsheet from the homepage) and apparently kitting out my house with LED bulbs (8 bulbs) would save £179.67 a year over normal bulbs! Are these figures realistic do you think?

Many thanks

Probably.


What type of bulbs do you currently have? i.e rating in W

What bulbs do you plan to replace them with? i.e. rating in W

How long is each bulb on per day on average?


The problem is that LED bulbs are still very expensive. It'll probably cost you alot of that £180 to replace them.

We use low energy bulbs that were given away by the energy supplierrs or were 10p each (subsidised) a few years back.

Switching from these low energy bulbs does not make financial sense currently.
(Of course we don't have any GU10 or similar bulbs, but I guess neither do you, or perhaps only a couple, if you only have 8 bulbs for the entire house)

NigeWick

I've kitted out my house with 3.8 watt LED bulbs (£6.99 full price). I got them from LED Hut after finding a 25% off voucher for May and going through Quidco. They are guaranteed for five years and should last a lot longer. It's a long term thing as far as I am concerned because I believe electricity will increase in price and they will eventually be cost effective.

forgotmyname

Check this youtube clipe before buying LED's.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=keaE7QTKTYE

To save £179 you would need to have a light or several lights on with a combined wattage of 179watts 24/7 and the lEDs using nothing.

Unless you leave lights on 24/7 or have a lot of lights then you probably wont save anywhere near that amount.

We only have 8 x 11w bulbs and one 36w strip. 124watts. So approx £124 a year if left switched on 24/7

Cardew

Personally I cannot see many people using £180 a year on lights, let alone saving that amount.

ic

Ignoring cost, LEDs have better colour and no warm up time. Aldi recently halved the price of the bulbs they were running (clearance, worth checking your local store), so I bought lots to replace a few lights around the house. I'm very happy with them.

SomeJoeNamedBob

I'll second ChumpusRex's warning about suspiciously cheap LED bulbs that have little or no attribution - having been zapped by one myself. That said, low energy lighting really does save money which is why you see councils replacing all their street lights.

I started replacing the real cost hogs a long time ago and wouldn't go back - not just because I'm now using tens rather than hundreds of watts to light any given room, but also because I now prefer the light quality over incandescent lamps.