Savings with LED bulbs?

[rjundi]

I have had 3 Cree bulbs fail of 8 LED within 6 months. The warranty is lovely you have to ship the entire bulb back/UPC code to get another which is obnoxious. I feel I got duped for $15! I am tempted to buy them at Home Depot and return the bad ones.

With dimmers Osram LED work the best at low dim the rest abysmal.

Make sure your fixture covers the bulb otherwise it will burn your retina's looking at an LED bulb no matter if its "soft" or whatever they state.

 

[cashmoney]

About 3-4 years ago we converted the entire house to cfl and leds. We have apprx 34 can lights in various ceilings that are all dimmable leds. Haven't had any fail. Between high efficiency AC (21 Seer) and lighting our electric bill runs $70-220 a month depending on the season. That is apprx 30% of our neighbors bills for same size house. One neighbor was getting $700-800 electric bills in summer on a 4k sq ft house - she had three 27 yo 10 seer AC units running almost non stop in summer months.

 

[JTK]

I've only got a few 60watt equivalent LED "bulbs" installed in heavy use ceiling lights. They've been in use about 2yrs with lots of hours. I think they are GE brand. I like them.

On the other hand, I've gone through 6-8 GU10 twist lock LED puck light that I replaced 40watt halogens with. They were cheap no name mail order house burners, but I'm back to halogens.

 

[440Magnum]

It doesn't make sense to change them out before the CFLs fail... but it would be utter stupidity to keep buying CFLs instead of LEDs. For one thing CFLs rarely meet their predicted life. I have had exactly 1 LED bulb fail. Cree and Philips have the best LED product lines currently available, IMO.

That said, I've pulled and scrapped a whole lot of CFLs because I simply couldn't stand the 45-second or longer warm-up to full brightness.

 

[440Magnum]

Originally Posted By: JTK


On the other hand, I've gone through 6-8 GU10 twist lock LED puck light that I replaced 40watt halogens with. They were cheap no name mail order house burners, but I'm back to halogens.


FWIW, our living/dining room is illuminated with 16 GUI-10 40-watt equivalent Philips twist-locks, and has been for 2 years. ZERO failures, and about an 8:1 reduction in power consumption and heat into the fixtures and room. I'll never buy a halogen again.

 

[ExMachina]

Originally Posted By: eljefino
If the bulbs you're replacing are giving off waste heat (eg indoors) that you're then cooling with AC the savings will come more than twice as fast, as a BTU is harder to get rid of than it is to create.


Great point. I like that hidden savings. People who aren't technical-types don't understand energy concepts, so its sometimes hard to explain. As in, if you're running a 60w incandescent, you're having to counter about ~59 watts of heat (estimated efficiency), where you can get the same lumens in a 10w LED and only have to counter like 8 or 9w of heat (CFLs similar but slightly higher.) Somebody may have to help me on percent actual light power vs. heat waste in the diff types of bulbs! I don't know exactly how efficient each is, light vs. heat, but the incandescents are almost all heat!

Wait, looked it up, and incandescents are about 10% efficient, better than I thought, so if you're running 60 watts old school, then you're having to counter about 54 watts waste heat with your air conditioner during the summer. Winter, better!

So if a bulb were 100% efficient, then you'd get about 800 lumens from only 6 watts, so that gives us a lower limit on what's possible. The fact that LEDs are doing 800 lumens using only 10 watts is remarkable, that makes them 60% efficient.

 

[SwampSurvivor]

Originally Posted By: 440Magnum
It doesn't make sense to change them out before the CFLs fail... but it would be utter stupidity to keep buying CFLs instead of LEDs. For one thing CFLs rarely meet their predicted life. I have had exactly 1 LED bulb fail. Cree and Philips have the best LED product lines currently available, IMO.

That said, I've pulled and scrapped a whole lot of CFLs because I simply couldn't stand the 45-second or longer warm-up to full brightness.



The warm up time is horrible, especially when it's cold out. My parents have a few CFLs in spots where there is no heat in their house (outside porch, for example) and when it's -10 out, it takes forever for them to warm up ... if they ever do.

 

[ExMachina]

Originally Posted By: Miller88
Originally Posted By: 440Magnum
It doesn't make sense to change them out before the CFLs fail... but it would be utter stupidity to keep buying CFLs instead of LEDs. For one thing CFLs rarely meet their predicted life. I have had exactly 1 LED bulb fail. Cree and Philips have the best LED product lines currently available, IMO.

That said, I've pulled and scrapped a whole lot of CFLs because I simply couldn't stand the 45-second or longer warm-up to full brightness.



The warm up time is horrible, especially when it's cold out. My parents have a few CFLs in spots where there is no heat in their house (outside porch, for example) and when it's -10 out, it takes forever for them to warm up ... if they ever do.


I've had about 5% new-bulb LED failures in the last couple of years. Growing pains I guess!.... Thing about CFLs, they are ultra cheap now, but after a while they actually fade to an annoying extent before outright failure. Some CFL brands are instant-on though.

 

[glock19]

We have been slowly converting to LEDs in our house. Initially, we did all of the heavily used/hard to reach lights (outdoor lamp post, kitchen recessed lights, etc...) The rest are getting replaced with LEDs as they burn out. Besides the energy savings, I find the biggest benefit to be in lamps that aren't on a switch. Reaching in to turn them off without worrying about touching a hot bulb is pretty nice.

EDIT: We've had pretty good luck with the 60watt equivalent bulbs from Lowes (Utilitech brand I believe). They're only $2.50 a piece.

 

[Nick1994]

Originally Posted By: JHZR2
LED lights are great, but if you have cfls in there, I'd wait until they burn out.

I'd also want to be sure that the lumens are the same. I suspect a 13w cfl will put out more lumens than an 8w led.
Yeah I think you're right, replace with LED when they die, who knows could be 2 years.

 

[zzyzzx]

Originally Posted By: JHZR2
LED lights are great, but if you have cfls in there, I'd wait until they burn out.


That is what I am doing.

 

[Benito]

Agreed