Arkady
President
Slate has a nice guide to LED light bulbs, here:
http://www.slate.com/articles/techn..._replace_the_incandescent_with_something.html
I'm a bit of a lighting snob. Even though I knew that fluorescents ultimately cost a lot less than incandescents, and were better for the environment, I had trouble bringing myself to buy them, because I found the bluish light garish, and I could detect the flicker even in a bulb that was working properly. It's the reason I can't stand office lighting. But when white LEDs started coming out at reasonable prices a few years ago, I began converting. They can be turned on and off instantly, they don't flicker, they can be put on a dimmer, and the color is close enough to incandescents that you'd need to be pickier than me to mind the difference.
The benefits of the changeover are terrific, even if you disregard the environmental and geopolitical advantages of using a lot less energy. For starters, it saves you money. Over the life of the LED bulb, it will save you something like $150, after accounting for the lower replacement bulb cost and the lower energy usage. Swap out a household's worth of bulbs, and you'll save thousands of dollars. You might even save some extra on cooling your house, since incandescents produce much more waste heat.
There are other side benefits, too. I used to find myself changing bulbs fairly frequently. If your typical bulb runs 3 hours per day, you'll be replacing it about once per year, which means in a typical house you'd be replacing one every other week or so. By comparison, with LEDs, a typical house might require only one bulb to be changed per year. It's not that it takes much time to switch out a bulb, but I usually notice it when my hands are full, and then forget about it, so that it keeps bugging me over and over until I finally get around to changing the bulbs. It makes life a little less stressful when the bulbs seem to last forever.
Because of their higher starting price point, LEDs also can have extra technology integrated into them. Mine are wirelessly networked, so that I can control them from my smartphone. I use this to set up programs for them to turn on and off on a schedule, during weekdays, to match my routine. When it's time to wake up in the morning, the light comes on. If I'm going to be away, I can have them turn themselves on and off on an irregular pattern, so anyone casing the house thinks someone's home. And I can save "scenes" (e.g., automatically setting bulbs to various dimmer levels for TV watching.)
I bring this up, because I think it's a preview of how the fight against global warming could go. Conservatives urge us to think of it as if any effort to limit carbon emissions is some anti-capitalist conspiracy that will cost us a fortune and make our lives miserable. But, in fact, the market's damned good at responding to these pressures. When it became clear incandescents were going away, lots of investment went into developing better, cheaper LEDs, and now we have options that are superior to incandescents not just in terms of environmental impact, but in terms of long-term consumer costs and benefits. You can save time and money while saving the environment. If we commit to reducing GHGs, we're likely to find the same pattern again and again with other technologies.
http://www.slate.com/articles/techn..._replace_the_incandescent_with_something.html
I'm a bit of a lighting snob. Even though I knew that fluorescents ultimately cost a lot less than incandescents, and were better for the environment, I had trouble bringing myself to buy them, because I found the bluish light garish, and I could detect the flicker even in a bulb that was working properly. It's the reason I can't stand office lighting. But when white LEDs started coming out at reasonable prices a few years ago, I began converting. They can be turned on and off instantly, they don't flicker, they can be put on a dimmer, and the color is close enough to incandescents that you'd need to be pickier than me to mind the difference.
The benefits of the changeover are terrific, even if you disregard the environmental and geopolitical advantages of using a lot less energy. For starters, it saves you money. Over the life of the LED bulb, it will save you something like $150, after accounting for the lower replacement bulb cost and the lower energy usage. Swap out a household's worth of bulbs, and you'll save thousands of dollars. You might even save some extra on cooling your house, since incandescents produce much more waste heat.
There are other side benefits, too. I used to find myself changing bulbs fairly frequently. If your typical bulb runs 3 hours per day, you'll be replacing it about once per year, which means in a typical house you'd be replacing one every other week or so. By comparison, with LEDs, a typical house might require only one bulb to be changed per year. It's not that it takes much time to switch out a bulb, but I usually notice it when my hands are full, and then forget about it, so that it keeps bugging me over and over until I finally get around to changing the bulbs. It makes life a little less stressful when the bulbs seem to last forever.
Because of their higher starting price point, LEDs also can have extra technology integrated into them. Mine are wirelessly networked, so that I can control them from my smartphone. I use this to set up programs for them to turn on and off on a schedule, during weekdays, to match my routine. When it's time to wake up in the morning, the light comes on. If I'm going to be away, I can have them turn themselves on and off on an irregular pattern, so anyone casing the house thinks someone's home. And I can save "scenes" (e.g., automatically setting bulbs to various dimmer levels for TV watching.)
I bring this up, because I think it's a preview of how the fight against global warming could go. Conservatives urge us to think of it as if any effort to limit carbon emissions is some anti-capitalist conspiracy that will cost us a fortune and make our lives miserable. But, in fact, the market's damned good at responding to these pressures. When it became clear incandescents were going away, lots of investment went into developing better, cheaper LEDs, and now we have options that are superior to incandescents not just in terms of environmental impact, but in terms of long-term consumer costs and benefits. You can save time and money while saving the environment. If we commit to reducing GHGs, we're likely to find the same pattern again and again with other technologies.
