In many situations yes, but keep in mind you will buy many CFLs over the lifetime of this one LED.
If your using it for several hours a day of use the lifetime cost would be similar for each (say 5-8 CFLs and a bit more electricity vs 1 LED).
If your using it in a bathroom or hallway or other place where its only used a few minutes at a time then the economics favour LED (10-15 CFLs and a bit more electricity vs 1 LED) because CFLs only last their rated life if used for over an hour each time you start them.
Two things to note, most $2 CFLs are low quality and the LED price will continue to drop in the coming years.
I ordered 10 PAR 16 for my recessed lighting with natural white 2 months ago from Aliexpress supplier for $3.25 each. My wife didn’t like it because it was too blue. So I place another order for 10 more in warm white 2 weeks ago from the same supplier. They told me because of the increase in material, the bulbs will cost $4.25 each.
It seems the prices are increasing and not decreasing for now.
thats a different market, your buying unsafe chinese yesteryear stuff that they charge what that batch cost from whatever supplier they are using this week plus who knows how many middlemen
that is very subsidized, if 3.97 is home depot’s price and 14.98 is the competitor’s price then who is this competitor, these bulbs are exclusive to home depot
At that you could buy 3, ship them to me and it would cost less then me buying them here (if i could afford it)
The fact that your statement above is true shows how ineffective these programs can be. With the government getting involved, irrational and uneconomical behavior can result. If I were to do that for you or anybody else (and I would, just PM me), in the overall scheme of things, the total cost of the bulbs is as high as anywhere else plus the added expense of the postage and the effort to pack and ship them. Add to that is the cost of the bureaucracy of the government and an item that is supposed to conserve ends up wasteful.
It’s all the high taxes in CT that pays for it. So unless I load up on these bulbs, I’ll becheated. (I bought 4)
BTW, the competitors color is blue, that would mean Lowes. So there are 2 reasons for the low price. Government subsidy and competition. I am for the latter, not the former
Here are some other displays.
You are incorrect, this does not prove this program is ineffective, it proves they are subsidized and should sell more because of the low price leading to more energy saved. Around here energy programs are calculated by the TRC (total resource cost) and the rebates are designed to be less in cost then the energy saved, so its cheaper to give the rebate then to generate the energy the incandescent would have used over its lifetime.
Also they are home depot exclusive, they are comparing to another brand Lowes sells but these bulbs are only sold by Cree to Home Depot, and these were designed to be cheaper then the competition even without subsidies (i suspect cree got into this because there was no real competition so LED profits were sky high along with the prices)
Looks like Cree made some new high-CRI versions of their bulbs. 93 CRI, but I think they only come in 2700K and they’re nowhere near as efficient as the original Cree bulbs. The original 2700K bulbs were 84 lm/W, and the high-CRI ones are only 59 lm/W.
I think I’m just going to rig up some Nichia 219s somehow, connected to a switched wall outlet. Probably just a copper star bonded to an old aluminum CPU heat sink, maybe with a removable cover to shield it from dust. It won’t be more efficient than Cree bulbs, but at least it’ll be a good color temperature and high CRI.
Or maybe MT-G2s would be better. I wonder how hard it’d be to make my own “puck” lights with a single MT-G2 on each. Or perhaps a XP-G2 triple on each, with three vastly different tints in the triple. And probably a NLITE driver, no mode memory, with a level selected by flipping the wall switch on/off for low/med/high. That sounds nice.
The 60W equivalent Cree should have been reduced from $12.97 to $6.97 at your local store. The 40W should have been reduced from $9.97 to $6.97. Here are the links
My local Home Depot doesn't have any of the 100 watters in stock yet. That said, I'm not going to pay $19.99 for them. I'll wait until the price comes down