replacing household lights with LED bulbs, advice sort please

tghe-retford

I replaced all of my lights with LED about a decade ago. And this was at a time when the lights cost a lot more. The main issue were replacements for the bathroom and kitchen. The bathroom one was a 2D light which at the time needed to be bought from a specific supplier online - no popping down to your trade merchant to buy one back then - and needed the starter taking out but works fine and has done for about a decade. The kitchen T8 tube was more work. If you have an magnetic ballast, you can replace the starter with what they provide and get a reduction of 50% or more in power use. If you have an electric ballast however, you will need to bypass it - and by you, I mean an electrician and then put up a notice stating that the fitting can only take LED lights from now on.

I've had two lights fail in the time I used them and when they failed, they failed not too long after being installed so I suspect they were both defective. LED lights have more electrical circuity in them which means there's more to potentially fail. But generally, they've been reliable.

Mostly in the evening I use a 2W LED in a lamp which lights up the area I am sitting. Bought it nearly 15 years ago (it uses the old style bulb type LEDs as opposed to the surface mounted ones everything uses nowadays) and still going strong with no failures.

One thing to note if you do buy LED lights and you listen to radio, they can cause interference. LED TV and monitors are notorious for knocking out DAB reception if you use a radio near them but it can also happen with LED lights. The DAB reception in town is night and day between erm... night and day. When all the shops turn off their lights, reception holds up but during the day, it is a mess of constant dropouts. So just something to be aware of. All the lights I bought have no adverse affect on radio reception but it is a possibility.

QrizB

ioealshk said:

0.18kw*24h*365days=1576.8kw a year. That's less than 10% of my electricity usage.

You have an unusually high electricity usage. Your calculated annual use for lighting is over 50% of the consumption of the national average dual-fuel household and over 75% of my household usage.

BUFF

QrizB said:

ioealshk said:

0.18kw*24h*365days=1576.8kw a year. That's less than 10% of my electricity usage.

You have an unusually high electricity usage. Your calculated annual use for lighting is over 50% of the consumption of the national average dual-fuel household and over 75% of my household usage.

It's ~40% above my total annual electricity usage! 

k_man

ioealshk said:

With the kw cost going up to 28p this means a monthly cost of £36.79 just to keep the lights on. This is considerably higher than £10 that it used to be in October for me, but still that's cheaper than taking a single shower.

 

Off topic slightly, but how much does a single shower cost you??

ioealshk said:

However, you have to bear in mind the health implications of using the LED lights. There have been many research projects looking into the long-term effects of using the LED lights; it's up to you to make your own conclusions based on that. But the general idea is that if you stare into a LED bulb for too long it may cause irreversible eye damage - add that to the long term cost.

Interesting point about potential eye damage.
But if the risk is when you stare at an LED bulb for a long time, I can think of an easy solution

k_man

Forgot to add (potential health risks aside), for most people a £30 per month saving is very far from fairly small, and would wipe out a big portion of the bill increases due to price increases on electricity.

victor2

k_man said:

ioealshk said:

With the kw cost going up to 28p this means a monthly cost of £36.79 just to keep the lights on. This is considerably higher than £10 that it used to be in October for me, but still that's cheaper than taking a single shower.

 

Off topic slightly, but how much does a single shower cost you??

My thoughts too. That's one heck of a "single shower" - a 9KW electric shower at 28p/kWh would last over 14.5 hours to cost that much.

coffeehound

Another factor with LEDs is people can be happier to leave the lights on for longer.  So that might blunt the savings that the raw wattages suggest

victor2

coffeehound said:

Another factor with LEDs is people can be happier to leave the lights on for longer.  So that might blunt the savings that the raw wattages suggest

Absolutely. I replaced 9 halogen spots in our kitchen with 9 LEDs and added two more. I was forever switching the halogens off, but it doesn't bother me unduly if the kitchen lights are accidentally left on all night now, and they are often on for a lot of the day as they are "daylight" bulbs and there isn't so much natural light in the kitchen..

FreeBear

ioealshk said: We have a bedroom light and two kitchen lights on for about 16 hours a day. All other lights are only on briefly, so let's say we've got three 60w bulbs on 24/7 - this will more than cover our light usage.

0.18kw*24h*365days=1576.8kw a year. That's less than 10% of my electricity usage.

3 bed semi here, one light fitting per room and six spots in the kitchen. Total energy consumption for lights over the last 12 months was 68KWh with LED bulbs in all fittings. [Have energy monitors to log consumption on whole home and lighting circuits].

coffeehound

victor2 said:

coffeehound said:

Another factor with LEDs is people can be happier to leave the lights on for longer.  So that might blunt the savings that the raw wattages suggest

Absolutely. I replaced 9 halogen spots in our kitchen with 9 LEDs and added two more. I was forever switching the halogens off, but it doesn't bother me unduly if the kitchen lights are accidentally left on all night now, and they are often on for a lot of the day as they are "daylight" bulbs and there isn't so much natural light in the kitchen..

I have a two-bulb floor lamp in the living room that used to be on a timer, but when that broke, I just left the light permanently on.  If it is 2 x 4 watts, then it's probably costing £18 a year now..  Perhaps it's time to start treating LEDs as we did incandescents 20 years ago