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Maybe
you own stock in the local utility and you prefer paying 10
times the amount for power. For the rest of us, LED
lighting is pretty much slam dunk due to a few factors but
the biggest by far is the savings on powering your lights.
There's no better lighting technology commercially available
to keep money in your pocket. Most residences and business
are in some other business...not the power or lighting
business so let's break down some of terminology and show
you how this directly translates into money...your money by
the way.
We all
tend to look at utilities bills whether is gas, electric, or
water and just assume there's not much we can do about.
Hey, we can barely read the bills much less figure out
what's really driving the monthly bills. Interestingly, the
utility portion of our monthly expenditure usually ranks in
the top 5 line items in terms of how much it eats up. It's
a lot of money but till now, we always looked at it as a
necessary evil beyond our efforts to really reduce. If
you're still burning (quite literally) incandescent and
fluorescent lights, that has all changed. Let's break down
the power savings across the three different types of bulbs
with just a common 60 watt light.
First,
we need to set the ground rules. We'll assume 10 cents per
KWH or Kilowatt hour. This is a measure of electricity and
it essentially speaks of a thousand (the "kilo" part) watts
times an hour. It's a standard measure of electricity and
one that should be on your electric bill once you become
fluent in Chinese, Russian, and binary code. The cost per
KWH (10 cents in our example) can fluctuate according to
State, type of user (residence versus various times of
business) and overall usage. 10 cents is actually pretty
low and your cost of electricity is likely higher..perhaps
much higher. Looking at our home bill, it's tiered by usage
and a large percentage of my house's lighting (before the
LED installation) was actually at a tier 3 rate or 42 cents
per KWH. That's 4 times the estimate were using so the
numbers to follow are very very conservative for most
people. The second piece aside from cost per KWH is the
wattage your actual lights use. This is where LED lights
shine (and shine and shine and..). Let's look at actual
numbers.
An
incandescent bulb at 60 watts in our baseline since it's
such a common bulb. Any brighter or stronger bulb will only
magnify the savings since increased wattage is required. A
typical CFL light bulb which is really just a less efficient
alternative to LED's would probably match that wattage with
13 watts. It would also add in some nasty phosphorous and
mercury to the equation. Now...drum roll please. You can
easily get the lumens or amount of light from and LED with 3
watts. That's right 3 watts will match a 60 watt
incandescent. Since the electricity utility charges you
based on watts used (the KWH), this directly translates into
money. An LED is almost 20 times more efficient and
conversely, 20 times less taxing on your monthly budget. Of
course the LED last much longer than the other types of
bulbs which offsets the higher LED cost. Why do LED's
create the same amount of light with such less power?
Incandescents and CFL's are very poor vehicles to turn
electricity into lumens. That's what we want after all...to
turn electrons into photons as efficiently as possible.
Incandescents transfer 90% of their incoming power into
heat. That's not a very good system but it was first and
easiest technologically speaking. Lights but be better
served if we wanted to heat a space...not light it. CFL's
are better but only get you part of the way to what LED's
do. Again, we have heat production (although less than
incandescent) and they use a chemical process of exciting
certain gasses that isn't entirely efficient. LED's
basically pump electrons into photons. There's almost no
heat and very little waste in the process. It's the most
direct we have and that's why you pay less per lumen of
light.
The net
effect is this. Over a 5 year window which is the
conservative life of the LED light, you can expect to save
$20 annually from one light bulb change. This is a
combination of power savings and less bulb replacements.
Look, if you want to invest in a utility, buy their stock.
In the meantime, reduce the amount you send to them by 90%
or more. Don't worry...they'll still find ways to buy pet
T-Rexs. |
