Led Lighting Brightening Up Home Energy Use In Near Future
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As homeowners face fuel surcharges and higher rates in their electric bills this month (Mine was absolutely insane.) LED bulbs for home interior and exterior lighting will make more sense.
The future is not now for home LED lighting, entry prices still top 100 dollars a bulb. However, pricing for new technology is always high for the early adapters, remember the $3,000 286 computers with a 100 meg hard drive?
As costs drop for LED lighting, expect homeowners to start investing in bulb purchases. I could see high end lamp or exterior lighting manufacturers selling the lamp and the bulb as a unit as one of the first forays into the home. The high cost of the bulbs will be defrayed by the low cost of energy usage making the concept very popular with homeowners facing high energy bills.
The Ledino bulb that’s intended to replace an ordinary incandescent one will cost about $107. Sure, it’ll last you 50 times as long and use a sliver of the energy of the traditional bulb, but… eek. Consumers will inevitably balk. Nonetheless, that situation is likely to change in the next two to four years – the Times reports that Philips is dedicating the bulk of its lighting R & D budget to LEDs and “not spending one dollar” on improving CFLs. via Plenty Magazine.


Comment by Eric on 26 August 2008:
According to the U.S. Department of Energy, just 8.8% of the electrical consumption of the average home is due to lighting. Lighting is not a big energy hog and is probably not the best place to be focusing on electrical energy reduction.
Changing out incandescents for CFLs makes sense where the lights are used a lot, but not much sense where lights are seldom used (closets, under stairs, utility rooms, some hallways, exterior lights). LED lights make even less sense in those situations. However, Congress will now require use to replace our incandescent bulbs that are virtually never used with more expensive CFLs. Which makes neither sense nor cents except for light bulb manufacturers. There is a place for each technology - but none of them are panaceas.