LED vs Incandescent - home lighting upgrade
 

OK... I've picked out a few rooms that are 'high traffic' and will be replacing approx. 14 50W/60W incandescents with 8W LEDs.

The goal is to reduce overall electricity usage although I don't see a return for a few months.

The bulbs will total around $50 for all 14.

QUESTION: has anyone gone ahead and done this and noticed a decrease in overall energy usage?

I've went leds in my home through out, its minimal gain for myself. Personally I don't use a lot of lights so for myself it's not the best case scenario. For my parents they live in Markham and they get charged more power if used during the day and for them they have seen a big difference in their bill.

tl;dr. Depends on your usage

I've switched all to LED LOW-DIMMED COLOR light, love them..

I switched all my house bulbs to LED's and my overall bill went up 30%...

Of course, that might have something to do with the 5kW heater I put in the garage...

Lights are such a drop in the bucket to the overall power bill...

You're looking at years not months for your ROI.

I've decided to replace incandescent with LED as they fail. Haven't noticed a change in energy costs really but have probably only changed 30% of my bulbs.

I've been swapping mine to LED out purely to get rid of the heat regular bulbs put out, not such a big deal in the winter but some rooms are noticeably cooler in the summer.

I've been slowly swapping out incandescent bulbs for either LED bulbs or one piece LED ceiling/wall fixtures. I haven't noticed much in the way of a lowered BC Hydro bill, but the fact that they're already lasting far longer than any "long life" incandescent bulb is nice. And as Underscore mentioned, I also do it to help combat the heat during summer time. Anything that helps my power sucker of an A/C unit run just slightly less frequently is great in my books.

The only ones you *might* notice a slight power bill decrease is your outside lights (if you leave them on all night) or high traffic rooms (kitchen, living room.) But yeah, very long term ROI in general.

my kitchen lights were using those 60W ones..i swapped em out a couple of years ago for the 8W LED's and I noticed a small but significant reduction in energy use since

i do agree with the heat comment though, last summer was the first summer where i've swapped out all my house lights to LED's and it was definitely cooler in the evenings

Why not just do the calculation to figure out how much you will save, the math is quite simple?

E.g., On average you save about 50W/bulb with an LED
Assuming you turn the light on for 6 hours per day = 300W/bulb/day =109.5kw/bulb/year
If your hydro cost is $0.10/kw, then you save around $10.95/bulb per year.

Also FYI, tho LED last much longer than incandescent, they don't really last 10 years/50000hr+ like they claim.
My business replaced everything with LED a few years back, they all went out after about 3 years (10-12000 hours)
This was 5years+ back tho, maybe things have improved a lot recently.

The reason why LED lamps don't save as much money or last as long as advertised in most cases is because they're used as a drop-in retrofit rather than a proper replacement.

Most people use their existing ballasts and luminaires which were never designed for LEDs. To see the advertised reliability and power savings, you need to upgrade those parts as well.

Of course, that means more money up front.

What are you talking about replacing? Most home lighting is 120V AC direct to the socket.

THREAD REVIVAL.

so i'm definitely seeing savings in my hydro bill since i've changed out 95% of my bulbs in my house. keep in mind i have a 3300 sq ft home and there's always lights on upstairs or downstairs or even in the rental. I think I changed out about 40-50 bulbs.

Anyways, Nov 15 2015 bill was $315... that was before ANY LED upgrades....got my bill today Nov 15 2016 bill at $194 with the statement on the bill saying I have used 35% less electricity than this time last year.

So far i'm still using the same amount of tv viewing, etc...but the LEDs have definitely made a huge difference.

MIND YOU, this time last year may have been colder as well so its still hard to measure but I'm pretty sure its making a difference.

I only run LEDs in rooms that I don't spend much time in, but lights are on quite a bit. Like the kitchen range hood, or outside our door, or the stairwell.

Even the highest quality warm temp LEDs emote a gross, eye straining light, at least in my opinion. No way can I run them in the bathroom, bedroom, living room, or as main kitchen lights.

Yes they're cheaper to run, but it's as if the quality of the light itself is reflected in that price DansGame

Have you tried the new one?
I put in new LED potlight, they actually looks much much nicer and natural compare to those I used a few years a back.
Wasn't very high end stuffs (not low end either)...just mid range stuffs supplied by the installer.

1 thing for sure is they look much much better than fluorescent light of any sort.
Problem with incandescent is...even tho they look nice, they are very hot during summer day, and you usually end up having much lower lumen because you need to keep the power down. I would much prefer a bright LED lite room than a dim incandescent lite room.

I put 8x LED potlight in my bathroom, draws around 56watts together and gives 4000+lumen. (looks like day time in there even with the blinds down)
If i wanted the same brightness in my bathroom using incandescent, I will need 500watts of incandescent light. Pretty impractical...

I've only ever tried the ones that replace normal bulbs. I've tried different brands, Philips being the best, "Sunshine" the worst.

Definitely better than fluorescent but there's still something about the harshness of the light it throws that bothers my eyes. It might even be OK in bathrooms... Definitely not bedrooms or the living room though.

lol now all i'll be thinking about are my LED pots not looking natrual now..

We're renovating our house and getting rid of all the knob and tube, so essentially completely rewiring 3/4 of the home. I've replaced about 3/4 of exiting lights with either LED pots or LED fixtures.

the home was quite dark before so it feels much better in terms of the overall light at the very least.

Used to have a teacher at BCIT for electronics who was crazy about all eletrical and worked for power smart for 6-7 years. He said although they always advertise changing to LED's the overall savings (at least back then, 3 years ago) would be so negligible as long as you shut lights off once in a while it wouldn't be worth the initial investment unless you needed to replace them

Yeah, but three years ago, LED bulbs were $25 each... Now you can get a 4-pack of 60W replacements for $10. And if you don't need to replace a bulb for several years, vs every six months or so...

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Yea Costco 8 packs for $19 really can't be beat in terms of replacements.

Keep in mind though, most of these cheaper bulbs are not dimmable even with LED dimmers

Dimmers aren't used very frequently though. One thing I do need to sort out is the dimmer in my kitchen, the pot lights function properly but there's a hanging light bar above the island that is momentarily at full brightness when the lights are first switched on, no matter what the dimmer is set to. Not the end of the world but a bit of a shock some mornings when I'm still waking up.

That's probably a function of the boot sequence on the light bar's LED driver, there's probably not much you can do to change it. I have some lights that do the same thing.

Just spent a $100 to buy dimmer bulbs and led switch. Realized my lutron switch is only compatible with certain bulbs :fuckthatshit:.

Atleast I get full brightness now with my dimmer but there is still some buzzing coming from the bulbs.

i've had 5 year warranty LED Bulb burn themselves out in under 2 years and i was screwed cause i kept none of the paper work :seriously: