LED Lights At Home

More advice from an early adopter October 15, 2009

A while back, Warren provided his experience with early LED replacement bulbs. He submitted the following comment on a recent post, but this is such encouraging news that I thought it deserved to be highlighted:

I have found a 60 watt replacement that is reasonably priced at $19.95. It is a 5.5 watt tube light and is so bright you can’t look at it. I got it from Super Bright. http://superbrightleds.com/edison_globe.html  part #E27-W35HF-T. If that isn’t bright enough for you, there is a 100 watt equivalent that I purchased from Luminosity, http://luminosityled.com/products/index.php/led-household-lightbulbs.html  for $36.79. It is 8.2 watts. These will really light up a room.

Thanks, Warren! I’ll be sure to check them out.

For those of you inclined to the numbers, let’s say you replace a bulb that is lit 4 hours per day with the above bulbs:

• The 60-watt equivalent will save 79.6 kilowatt hours, or almost $12 at electricity rate of $.15 per kwh. Here in Massachusetts, rates are closer to $.20 so I would save almost $15.
• The 100 watt equivalent will save 134 kwh, $20 at $.15 per kwh and nearly $27 for me.

Another way to put it is each of these bulbs will pay back the initial cost in under 2 years, but since they are likely to last at least 7 years (10,000 hours) they will save a lot of money over the lifetime.

Now that cfl’s have come down to the sub $10 range (and I often see them in the sub $5 range) I don’t think these prices are mass market yet. But they are close enough that early adopters will buy them, starting the feedback look that will increase volume and lower costs, prove the market, attract more competition, further lower prices, spur more demand, etc.

Perhaps the L-Prize , with its more modest goal of replacing a 60-watt bulb with a 10-watt LED, won’t be the primary kickstart to the market.