Energy Efficient Lighting

[Bailes1992]

I've just spent the morning swapping all the lamps over in my house.
Most of the lights in our house use standard B22 lamps, nearly all of them 100W.
The living room light used/uses 6x 40w G9 capsules. That's 240W, or 1A!
We also had 3x 60w GU10 IP56 spotlights in the bathroom.
With all the lights on in the house I was pulling 4.2A.

I've replaced all the lamps with LED's it should have cost around £100 but I had lots of the lamps FOC.
All the lamps have a two year warranty but should last far longer (up to 25years).
Now with all the lights on I am pulling just 600mA or 0.6A.
The lights come on full brightness straight away unlike compact florescent lamps too!

In theory they should pay for themselves over a set amount of time but I haven't done the maths yet.

Bailes.

[benczuk]

I have considered swapping my kitchen lamps from 5x50w halogen to LED a number of times.

The LED equivalents would cost £36 from Lidl. The halogen bulbs draw 250w, which on my current tarif (14p/kWh) costs me 3.5 pence per hour. A high guess would be that they are on for 2 hours a day, for 50% of the year making it cost £12.77 a year. Ergo 3 years to recoup the outlay ignoring the usage of the LEDs.

That sort of number doesn't motivate me in the slightest unfortunately..

[Bailes1992]

You also have to take into account replacing the lamps.
How often do you replace them? Once a year?
How much do they cost, £1 each?

You have 5 of them so you'd be saving £5 a year on replacing the lamps alone!

[Welly]

I replaced my 50W GU10's in the Kitchen months ago, there's 9 fittings so I've gone from 450w to 45w, they're on a lot at night time and I have seen the leccy bill fall now.

I've now got 9 others elsewhere and slowly working on replacing them all. I have 56 downlighters

The only thing I messed up was fitting 'Daylight' grade ones in the Kitchen as they're too Blue-looking and very bright, the 'Warm White' are perfect though for me.

I've also replaced the 250W and 150W security Floods with LED's and 2 x bulkhead externals with some fancy 6W small fluorescent weird things with no detriment to lighting (its better in fact). I think the technology is there now to get good efficient lighting.

I have to mention one traditional bulb in a Hi/Lo bulkhead fitting I have outside; it's been on every night for 11 years on the same bulb

[benczuk]

I would guess I replace maybe one a year, two at most.

The risk of buying the wrong temperature also puts me off welly. I don't fancy having to repeat the outlay as they are the wrong color. It doesn't matter too much in the kitchen i suppose, it will just make the food look a little washed out.

[Welly]

I'm trying dimmable LED's too which are ok but on the lowest setting tend to 'shimmer' a bit like a TV screen and get annoying. They were MUCHO expensive

[Bailes1992]

Temperature isn't an issue. You want between 3000k and 3500k.
The 6000k or "cool white" are far too white for a house.

[benczuk]

<pedank>K stands for kelvins. kelvin is a unit of temperature</pedant>

[PeterN]

Although LED lamps are a little more eficient than CFLs the latter are much cheaper at the moment, I saw some for less than £1 yesterday. I have 7x15 watt ceiling lights in my kitchen which which give the equivelent to over 500w of tungsten lighting for a consumption of 105w with the bonus of no appreciable heat output. I expect the cost of LEDs will continue to fall but in the meantime I will stick with CFLs.

Peter

[Bailes1992]

I personally prefer standard GLS or GLS 'energy saving' lamps over CFLs.
CFLs are hateful things! They always seem to give off a dull light. Even the 100w+ equivalent ones.

[PeterN]

The spiral 15 lamps give a much brighter light than tungsten type they replace. I accept that early CFLs were not to good on light output but try some of the modern ones. Slow warm up is still a problem although that has also improved.

Peter

[Rolebama]

We have been using CFLs for nearly 25yrs now, and I have to say that they are now much better than they were. The coiled ones are, as has been said, much better than 'straight' ones, but not only in light output, but they don't seem to have to warm up before giving their optimal light. The original Phillips which I bought for around £10 each in 1980 lasted around 10yrs before they failed. (They were also very heavy compared to today's.)
I have also tried the so-callled dimmables, where you turn them on and they slowly cycle from dull to bright and then dim. When they have reached the required light output, you switch them off and back on again quickly which makes them keep a fixed output. I bought a couple to try them, and they lasted around 18months.

[Doggy]

Horses for courses.....

I have 3 x 22W CFL's in outside lights, which are OK. Cfl's in most rooms of the house which are crap, (not bright enough, slow warm-up etc.).

I only have one 35W downlighter in the shower and can't bring myself to change this since I imagine it warms the cubicle up a gnat's.

The bane of my life is Mrs Doggy's 'favourite' multi-halogen fittings* - the one in the kitchen's got 4 x SES spots of about 35W each, the dining room has 5 x halogen capsule lamps of about 25W a piece. I don't think there's a low energy alternative, so have fitted PIR switches which I also hate, but at least you can't leave them on. (I'm trying not to think about the gas leak advice - 'Don't operate light switches on or off').

*She's got two more of these pesky things that I've been postponing fitting to the up & downstairs hall lights for at least a twelvemonth so far.....

[Welly]

You mean those sort of cluster lights on a short pole-thing? you have to point them where you want but usually end up with one pointing in yer face at any part of the room

@Rolebama - do you mean the dimmable LED's have a sort of memory if turned on/off quickly? reason being I've got 5 that no longer dim down enough, they dim but only a bit.

[rwb]

Are LED GU5.3 any good? I seem to remember something about if your GU5.3 are 12V then you have to have a special transformer in order to use LEDs?

Can you tell whether they're 12V or 240V without getting a bulb out? (I can't take them out without smashing them -- and getting covered in glass.) How are you supposed to get the fuckers out in one piece?