Question about interior lighting.

[Irving]

OK. Not to be a dick or anything, but we've been up here 18 years and our bill has been within a few bucks a months the entire time. Going to new (expensive, government mandated) bulbs did nothing to our bill at all.

Pretty sure reporting your experience with actual facts doesn't make you a dick. I looked on-line and I can only see the past 24 months. I was done converting by then, and I had compact florescent before the LED. I took a screen shot, but it doesn't mean much. I held the cursor over the month with the biggest difference and it was only a few dollars. You've piqued my interest though, so I think I'm going to call Xcel and see if they still have data from the year that we moved in.

[Aloha_Shooter]

I put on a pretty massive Christmas light show at my house and my parents house. My parents house consists of mostly incandescent lights and my display is completely LED. My parents electric bill goes up a couple hundred bucks when they run the Christmas lights and mine only goes up about $15. Both of our shows are synchronized to music and involve hundreds of strands of lights being turned off and on.

I don't do a massive show but ran about 12 strings of LED lights on trees in the backyard and plan to add to that next year. The nice thing is that the LED strings in the backyard are powered by solar collectors so they cost me nothing other than initial purchase and the time to put them up and take them down. I expect I will have to replace the batteries eventually -- the lawn lightsticks I put in last year are already fading after just 2-3 hours of operation (last year they ran from dusk to nearly dawn) but I've left those around the lawn all year round -- but they look good and add no load to the grid.

The LED lights I strung along the front of the house are traditional plug-ins and it's just easier to leave them on all day -- you really can't tell they're on during the day unless you look hard and they're there as soon as it gets dark. Plus, leaving them on all day/night removes one indicator that I might not be home.

[hollohas]

But it'll cost you more money in wasted electricity than the cost of replacing the tube.

This is true. However, for commerical use there is more to consider when considering lifetime cost. Businesses may have hundreds or thousands of lamps. Many large commerical spaces used to choose to leave them on...but dimmed. This is because they have to pay people to change them which is expensive. In many cases it cost more to change lamps more frequently than the extra electricity to keep them on. That was obviously largely dependant on the electricity cost.

New electrical code requires they be turned off when not in use in commercial spaces. But the on/off cycle killing lamp life is moot now because 90%+ of new commercial lighting is LED. I rarely sell anything that isn't LED anymore.

Fluorescents also contain mercury and they’re terrible for the environment if not disposed properly.

Meh. A modern T8 lamp (like Philips Alto II) has 1.7mg of Mercury. In a unit that more of us would understand, that's 0.026 grains of Hg.

Let's compare the terrible for the environment Fluorescent lamp vs an incandescent lamp. Consider a 5 year life (on for 12 hours per workday)...

Fluorescent lamps (32w cfl, 20,000 life) used over 5 years - 1
Hg in each cfl lamp - 6mg
Hg emissions from power plant to power fluorescent lamp for 5 years - 30mg
Total environmental Hg - 36mg

Equivalent incandescent lamps (150w, 750 hour life) used over 5 years - 21
Hg per lamp - 0
Hg emissions from power plant to power lamps for 5 years- 140mg
Total environmental Hg over 5 years - 140mg.

The environmental impact of the Hg in fluorescent lamps used to be an issue but is way overblown now.

New LED tech is the best of both considering Hg pollution. They typically have zero Hg in the lamp and they are more efficient than Fluorescent so the power plants contribute less Hg as well.

For home use, LED's are finally priced right too.

16w LED A19 - 15,000hr life - $5. Electrical cost during life $29 total @ $0.12/kwh. Lifetime cost $34.

23w CFL - 10,000 life - $3. $4.50 cost for lamps over 15k hours. 43% more electricity. ($41 total @ $0.12/kwh). Lifetime cost $45.50.

75w A19 incandescent - 1,000hr life - $0.60. $9 cost for lamps over 15k hours. Almost 500% more electricity.($135 total @ $0.12/kwh). Lifetime cost $144.

[Irving]

CFLs are much cheaper than $3-$4 per though. But thanks for doing the math for the examples.

[hollohas]

To keep apples-to-apples with the 16watt LED lamp, I used a more expensive 23watt cfl which run about $3/ea for name brand on Amazon.

A 16watt A19 LED replacement lamp and a 23watt cfl each have the same amount of light output so they were a good comparison.

A 9watt LED lamp (about $3.75) is typically equal to the very common 13watt cfl (about $2). Both are 60w replacements. You come out ahead with LED in this case too. Actually the cfl lamp could be free and you'd still come out ahead with the LED over the 15,000 life @ an average $0.12/kwh.

[Irving]

I'm calling you out here Sturv. What do you call "significantly"? 10% reduction in electric bill?

Okay, I called in and got the lady to read me the monthly kWh from the first full year that I lived here 2013. Back then I had less light fixtures and everything was incandescent or florescent; not to mention I have twice as many computers and electronics that are always/often plugged in and charging.
I don't know what the rate per kWh was back in 2013, but it seems to be about $8.5 now, so I just used that figure for all three years and put everything into a spread sheet.
You can be the judge, but I'm still comfortable with using the word "significant."

[GilpinGuy]

Good on ya Stu. I didn't mean to give you a homework assignment, but it looks like you're benefiting from the change if all that changed was the bulbs. We've seen zero difference in our electric bill, but we do have a very modest home. We just don't have a ton of bulbs burning I guess.

I have nothing against LED's. In fact I wrote earlier that I like them better that incandescents. I am a bit jaded by having several "go bad" by flickering wildy in less than a a year though. They're supposed to last years and years.

[NFATrustGuy]

One of the first things I did when I moved into my new [to me] home last year was switch out all the light bulbs to LED. This was a pretty big task. I have 78 can lights in the house and probably another 60 other bulbs of various styles. I purchased almost all of the bulbs from Costco. I've had a very high failure rate with the LEDs that look like a standard old-fashioned light bulb. I haven't kept exact numbers, but I'd estimate a 25% failure rate within the first year. I haven't had a single failure of any of the can light bulbs (mostly PAR30).

My whole house uses z-wave enabled dimmer switches. The can lights tolerate the dimmers well, but the standard-looking bulbs flicker at lower dimmer settings. They do a big flash as they quickly dim from full bright to off. I'm a bit bummed and am hoping technology continues to improve because I really like the concept of using less electricity and never having to replace a bulb again.

I wish I would have saved all the bulbs that burnt out so I could have returned them to Costco. If I would have known that such a large number were going to fail, I certainly would have done it, but I figured I'd be seen as petty for making a warranty claim on one or two lightbulbs.

[Great-Kazoo]

NM DT

[Aloha_Shooter]

I usually have one, maybe two, lights on at a time (if any) with about half my bulbs being either CFL or LED so I wouldn't expect changing the bulbs to have a significant effect over the hot tub, computers, TV, etc. Having said that, there's almost no reason I can think of to NOT switch to LED bulbs as your regular ones burn out.