How To Save Money With Low Energy Lighting
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by: BrionyKennicot | Total views: 83 | Word Count: 680
There are several good reasons to consider installing low energy light bulbs, chief among them being that you can save serious sums of money, you can help to reduce global warming and, thanks to legislation banning incandescent light bulbs, you don't really have a choice.
So what choices are on offer in the world of domestic low energy lighting? In truth there are only two realistic technologies available: CFL's (Compact Fluorescent Lamps) and LED's (Light Emitting Diodes).
Of the two, CFL's have been fairly widely available for longer but are only about 4 times more efficient than incandescent and have a lot of serious issues relating to health, aesthetics, usability and the environment.
LED's have only recently become available for domestic use but are already 10 times more efficient and constantly improving at an astounding rate, and pose no problems at all.
The obvious question here is: if LED's are so far ahead of both incandescent and CFL light bulbs then why don't more people install them? There are a number of reasons but let's look at the two principal ones.
The first is that many people still associate LED's with their past as Xmas lighting and battery torches and simply don't regard them as viable domestic lighting. This is in large part due to the fact that high quality domestic LED light bulbs are still very new and still not widely available.
The second reason for the slow adoption of LED's to date is lack of widespread understanding of the economics of electrical lighting and the tendency for people to pay attention to what appears most immediate and neglect what's actually going on.
That's why we grumble when opening the latest electricity bill and balk when confronted with the cost of LED light bulbs in the hardware store; all the while totally missing the connection. A sizable proportion of the average electricity bill is due to the cost of lighting - it's not the cost of the light bulbs that matters, it's how much it costs to run them.
Those "cheap" incandescent light bulbs convert less than 10% of the electricity into light; the rest of the electricity (and the money you paid for it) is wasted as heat. Compare that to an "expensive" LED light bulb that converts over 90% of the electricity into light.
You can hit break-even on the investment cost of apparently expensive LED bulbs in about a year and from there on just keep raking in the savings. Most LED's last 50,000+ hours compared to 2,000 hours for incandescent lights, so that's 25 times less replacement cost too. Perhaps high price, high quality LED's are actually the cheaper option after all.
So what should you look for when checking out low energy light bulbs? Foremost is quality; there are many cheap LED's on the market and they're not worth a candle (well maybe a few, but that's all).
Most good quality LED light bulbs clearly indicate what type of incandescent bulb they are suitable to replace. So if you're looking for a low energy alternative to say a warm white 35w halogen down light with a 50 degree beam then make sure your candidate LED's claim to match that spec.
The second most important thing to take on board is that the light from an LED is by nature extremely directional and therefore highly suitable for spot lighting. Which is not to say that there aren't good all round light LED's available, just that spot light applications are where LED's have a natural advantage and have accordingly become highly popular with folk wanting to replace hot and inefficient MR15 format halogen spot lamps.
Note that although MR16 is a specification for the size and construction of spot light reflectors (the bit you see and that shines) it has become almost synonymous with 12 volt low voltage systems that use the GU5.3 two pin base; it also in fact covers mains voltage lamps that use instead the GU10 twist/lock system. But whichever you choose to consider, both 12v LED and GU10 LED light bulbs provide an ideal entry point to the world of ultra low energy lighting.
About the Author
If you found this article interesting then Briony Kennicot also recommends energy saving lighting and MR16 LED spotlights in particular.
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