51 watts per hour saved. Four hours a night, 30 days a month would be ~6 kWh. At $0.12/kWh, a $0.72 per month savings. You must run your lights longer and/or pay more for electricity.

Whatever, in about a year these LEDs pay for themselves. And that’s without adding in the cost of new incandescent bulbs. A one year payback is a 72% return on investment.

I would like an 100 watt replacement. Hope they come out with that soon.

More recently I get them at the local home/building supply place. They often go on sale for $0.50 or $1. Looking at a couple they aren’t brands I recognize – MaxLight and FEIT.

Mine are in table/floor lamps that don’t trap heat. Seems like most of the failures I’ve heard about are when they are used in a ceiling can or some other place where they get too hot.

That ‘light bulbs as a heat source’ just doesn’t make sense. It’s an old, worn-our right wing anti-efficient lighting argument.

As a bit of a hippie I am pro-LED, Almost daily there are press releases claiming new levels of comfort and efficacy. Couple that with no mercury and less rare earth phosphors (which are soaring in price, so CFL won’t be much cheaper forever) used in their construction, then environmentally its a no brainer.

From a fiscal point of veiw though its not still all roses in terms of energy use.

There is another factor creeping into the cost of ownership equation if you live in a northern region such as I in the UK. Filament bulbs produced a great amount of heat as well as being a useful and comfortable light source. As well as being a source of heat that contributed to warming a room, the siting of them means they produced a nice thermal blanket at ceiling level which kept other heat sources circulating in the room instead of rising straight through. The EU has banned, or is in the process of banning, the sale of filament lamps, so unless we invest more heavily in flooring insulation on each story at the same time as replacing our lighting we will have to reckon on our heating energy units increasing to compensate, thus reducing the apparent savings and increasing pay back time.

If you live in a hot climate, you should be on the LED bandwagon as the opposite will occur and you could potentially reduce aircon bills without having to sit in the dark. Hmmmm, I’ve always fancied life on a ranch. Does Texas have room for one more nerdy limey?

My oldest has dimmed over the years so it’s now used for ‘ambiance’, not reading. But it’s still working….

We need warranties and have them provide easy replacements OR the government goes after them for false advertizing! The run around for a replacement is a nightmare.

LED costs even more so the scam becomes even worse. We also could use a standard for DC lighting which would help a little as it would remove most the electronics used in the bulbs. (I don’t see why we couldn’t have LED/CFL units separate of the converter– then new houses can have a new socket and old ones get converters.)

A 60 watts incandescent would output around 700 lumens while the 12.5 watt leds bulbs available at my grocery store, would output around 450 lumens… (hardly “equivalent”)

Leds are still more efficient than incandescents (35 lumens per watt instead of 12 lumens per watt for incandescents) However, CFLs I purchased were giving out 70 lumens per watt…

I think overstated output explains why a lot of people a disapointed by CFLs and LEDs. But if they did their own math they would be able to know what they should purchase to replace Incandescent lightbulbs accuratly…