July 15, 2016
LED Lighting Bulb
Does Dallas Homeowners Can Save Energy (Money) Using Led Lights?
Light your home using the same amount of light for less money. An average household dedicates about 5% of its energy budget to lighting. Switching to energy-efficient lighting is one of the fastest ways to cut your energy bills.
For this reason, LED lighting is able to use light and energy more efficiently in many applications.
Everything You Need to Know About LED Light Bulbs
Traditional incandescent lightbulbs are gone—not banned, precisely, but phased out because the Energy Independence and Security Act (EISA), passed in 2007, requires them to be about 25 percent more efficient. That’s impossible to achieve without decreasing their luminous flux (brightness), so, instead, manufacturers have shifted to more energy-efficient technologies, such as compact fluorescents (CFLs), halogens, and LEDs.
Of course, not everyone is embracing these next-gen lightbulbs. Some wonder why we need a mandate to use them, if they’re so great. The fact is, after more than a century of incandescents, we’ve become attached to them. They’re cheap, they dim predictably, and they emit a warm and familiar glow. Weaning ourselves off them won’t be easy: Just as the 40- and 60-watt phaseout went into effect on Jan. 1, about half of the 3.2 billion screw-base bulb sockets nationwide still housed incandescent bulbs.
So, what now? According to a survey by switch manufacturer Lutron, two-thirds of American adults are unaware of the phaseout, but only one in 10 are “very knowledgeable” about replacement options.
Most of us will probably buy halogens without even noticing. At about a dollar apiece they are cheap, and they look, feel, and function almost exactly like traditional incandescents. But they’re only about 25 percent more efficient—just enough to meet EISA standards. Meanwhile, CFLs, which are inherently flawed and generally unpopular, are steadily losing market share.
That leaves LEDs, which offer the most sustainable—and exciting—alternative to incandescents. For starters, they’re highly efficient: The average efficacy of an LED bulb is 78 lm/w (lumens per watt), compared with around 13 lm/w for an incandescent and approximately 18 lm/w for a halogen equivalent. Yes, LEDs have their shortcomings: Buying an LED bulb doesn’t seem as intuitive as picking up an incandescent from your local drugstore, and the up-front cost is high.
Once you get to know the technology and the incomparable versatility that LEDs offer, you’ll see the demise of the incandescent as an opportunity. Here’s a primer that addresses your concerns and helps you navigate the dazzling array of choices.
LEDs have caught up with and surpassed conventional incandescent and compact fluorescent light bulbs. But faced with an array of unfamiliar shapes, statistics, and specifications we may not understand, we’re tempted to retreat into the lights we’re used to…despite the nagging feeling that we may be wasting more energy and changing bulbs more often than we should. If you’re curious about converting to LED (it stands for Light Emitting Diode, and each bulb contains several diodes), we’ll cover the basics to help you choose wisely.
How Do LED Lights Save Money?
Light-emitting diodes, more commonly referred to as LEDs, are semiconductors that emit light when an electrical current is applied to the component. Even though LEDs have been around since the early ‘60s, it is only in recent years that white LED bulbs have become more commonly used as a substitute for other industrial and household lighting systems. Their rising popularity is due, in part, to the positive impact they have on energy-efficiency. Find out how LED lights are saving the planet, one lumen at a time.