You may know LEDs as the little lights on the front of your TV, you may know them as the technology behind the latest flat screen monitors. Did you know that these cool little pieces of technology could save you hundreds of pounds every year?
Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs) are unique when it comes to home lighting for several reasons. First and foremost, unlike traditional incandescent bulbs, LEDs don’t get hot. This is important for two reasons: firstly LED lighting doesn’t waste energy as heat, and secondly they have a much, much longer operational life. Where an old incandescent bulb will last for an average of 1000h hours (double that if it’s a halogen bulb), the average LED bulb has an operational lifespan of around 30,000 hours. At the rapid rate that LED technology has evolved over the years, this figure will only go up too. Not only does that mean less home maintenance and far less hassle for you, but it means less broken bulbs filling up landfill at the end of the day.
As nice of a bonus as this is, the real benefit to switching to LED lies in your lowered energy bills. The average 3 bedroom house contains around 8 lightbulbs, and the average lightbulb runs at around 75W or 6W for incandescent bulbs and LED bulbs respectively. If you were to light a household with these bulbs for an average of 8 hours per day, 7 days a week, you would see that LEDs are the much cheaper option. At an average price of 12.2p per kWh, the household with incandescent bulbs would spend £213.16 on lighting over the course of the year. By contrast, the GU10 LED-lit home would only spend £17.05 on their lighting over the exact same time period. Considering that lighting usually accounts for up to 40 per cent of your electricity bills, the overall savings can be quite impressive. Sticking to incandescent bulbs in light of this is basically just throwing money away.
This increased efficiency saves more than just your wallet though – the incandescent lights in the above scenario would produce an estimated 953kg of CO2 over the course of the year. The LED lighting would only product 76kg, making LED lighting not only cheaper, but much, much better for the environment, too.
So what are the benefits of switching to LED, year on year? Longer lasting bulbs mean less money spent on home maintenance. This means less hassle for you as they burn brighter, burn cleaner and burn less money. They run up to 90 per cent cheaper than incandescent bulbs, and massively reduce your carbon footprint. The only real downside is the initial investment, as the bulbs can cost around £5-10 each. Considering how quickly these bulbs pay for themselves however, this is probably the best downside you can possibly have. Do your bit for the environment and save money in the process by switching to LED today.
Hi, was this blog sold? Its like a complete 180 around here , the most recent posts are all very impersonal. Whatever happened to the house projects , the land sale and the work with local children?
Would love to know if anything has changed on the administration side of things, I enjoyed those posts.
Hi Pauline,
I agree – I’m finally convinced by LED lights. I’ve been trying them out for years, but they were always too dim, or too blue.
The latest set I bought are perfect in the kitchen. The prices have dropped too.
One problem here in the UK though – none of the high street shops seem to stock LEDs with the old-style bayonet fitting. So there are about 8 lamps I have to stick with CFL for.
I have been using LED lights at home and I think I have saved so much compared with using the typical light bulbs we used to have. Though the price of LED is expensive, it’s still worth it because electricity bill is nowadays much lower.