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| Our lamp with LED inside; |
Not much that seemed to happened when I installed an LED bulb on Friday; the lamp worked more-or-less same as before. But I knew that I was, invisibly, saving money and energy..
A contractor doing an energy audit gave us an LED bulb to try out, and it only makes sense to put it in the place where it will get the most use, so that it saves as much energy as possible. I pondered the bathroom, kitchen and other areas when I realized that the one light that is on nearly half the time is the lamp on our walk.
Nearly all houses have a porch light or a lawn light or something that illuminates the front of the house so that when you come home at night or when a neighbor walks by, there is light to see where you are, avoided stumbling and so forth. However I don't often think of this lamp as an opportunity for energy saving. I had put a compact flourescent in it a couple of years ago, but I was eager to see whether the LED bulb was as good.
The results were almost unnoticable. I think the light may be a little bluer but it's well within the range of normalcy. The cost savings is obvious; the original incandescent use 60 watts, and the LED uses six watts. Imagine if all outdoor lamps did the same!
Now the money savings are not huge; according to the estimate on the box, it should be something like $1.50 a year. However the LED could last 20 years or more, making it a decent although not awesome investment in monetary terms. In terms of being frugal and making our world a better place to pass on to the next generation, this has been a success already. Price of LEDs are falling steadily, so I anticipate in time they will be completely competitive with other forms of light. Imagine lighting our whole house on the juice that used to power only one or two bulbs!
1 comment:
The cool thing about LEDs is that, not only are they even more energy-frugal than compact fluorescents, but they don't have the mercury disposal problems since they're all-solid-state.
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