I received an ad via e-mail from Home Depot today. In the ad it discusses the savings that you can achieve with an LED bulb over a traditional Halogen or incandescent bulb. The savings claim really surprised me. The claim is that you could save $30 per year per bulb when replacing your incandescent/halogen with an LED (view the graphic in this post to the right to read the claim).
The part that surprised me the most was to think that a single bulb in my home could cost more than $30 per year. How many bulbs are in your home. Just looking around, I have 10 bulbs in my home office alone. As with most, we won’t be turning on every light in a room, but it really got me thinking about the cost of running the bulbs that we do have.
I did a quick search to see if I could find a light bulb cost calculator. Sure enough (the Internet has everything). I located a comparison calculator at the following site: http://www.ledwaves.com/led-calc/index.php
Energy Efficient LED Bulb
If you are looking to find the savings number in your home, you will need a few bits of information.
- Bulb wattage
- Your electricity cost per kilowatt hour (KWH). You should be able to locate this on your electric bill
- Cost of bulb (easy to estimate)
- Life of bulb (check the package or take the average suggested)
The math becomes easy when you have these numbers. The wattage of the bulb will determine the energy used. The calculator will take that number, along with the hours used per day and multiply it times your electricity cost. That will provide you with the cost per bulb.
I was surprised to find that a 75 watt bulb in my home, on for 6 hours per day, could cost about $11 per year. The math used in the Home Depot ad must be getting rather liberal.
One nice function of the LED bulb calculator is that it will provide the math for the break even point of a new LED bulb. This will factor in the bulb life expectancy and cost of the bulb.
After seeing that the LED being pitched by Home Depot was $49, I did a little checking. Not a bad price. Some of the replacement LED’s are made specifically to replace halogen bulbs in recessed lighting fixtures. It can screw in an provide a more modern look for your old 6″ cans.
Can you stomach the $49 price tag?
Leave A Comment
You must be logged in to post a comment.