Actually you can pretty much ignore the AC costs. A typical AC unit might move 40 watts of heat using 1 watt of electricity. So replacing each 50 watt halogen with a 10 watt LED bulb only takes a watt off your electric bill per bulb.
really, i thought the efficiencies were about 300% but your saying its 4000%?
Yes. Remember AC units don’t actually destroy heat, they just move heat around. A typical unit moves something like 40 watts of heat for each watt of power expended.
I was looking at facility series 3 years ago for staircase lighting and they were really expensive
I have thought about the LED revolution alot. My main thought is, once the majority of folks have switched over to leds. The only reason for them to change them ever again in their lives will be for different color, output or more efficient. But if you really think about that for a while. Not many folks will care about color & output and how much more efficient do they have to be for people to buy another light and headache with changing them?? And once they get cheaper and are the norm (years down the road) and everyone has them, will the sales decrease because they don’t die? I guess I liken it to if someone built the perfect car that never broke or wore out parts. Would that kill sales of new ones?
Footnote: I have changed over all my high use outdoor lights, and “night lights”. I say night lights cause they are the real lights that the kids and wife like to leave on ALL the time. Like that hall light, kitchen sink light and so on. I actually have seen a reduction, albeit small on my electric bill. It will probably take me 10 years to break even on what I spent on bulbs.
for those of you that has switched to led home lighting, did you guys replace the whole housing as well? or just the light bulb?
i heard from a friend, that his contractor told him that the led bulbs will kill the socket in the long run. something about the circuitry is not right, and should buy the led with the housing in complete set.
is this true?
Nope, it’s utter bull excrement. If anything the socket will last much longer. The LED bulbs don’t get anywhere near as hot as an incandescent. Some halogen bulbs get to like 800 degtees C… hence the ceramic sockets.
ok thats good to know, i just spend over an hour looking at led bulbs right now.
so what you guys like better for a hallway? par38 or br40?
They are pretty much the same thing. PAR38 probably leaves more room for air to circulate.
I’ve replaced most of my house with LED light bulbs, there are 3 that i want 100W equivalent for and it costs too much so they are CFL, i waited for very good sales and got my 60W equivalents for $6-7 each (including tax). They are Philips bulbs and come with a 3-5 year warranty.
As texaspyro said, utter bull.
Your friend doesn’t need to change his sockets, but he does seriously needs to change his contractor
he may not need to change sockets, but he does need some blinker fluid and muffler bearings for his car 
Come now Bort, you forgot the stem lube…
Well, actually Der Mercedes does have der muffler bearings… well OK, actually muffler donuts… aaaarrrgggg donuts… big rubber rings that the muffler hangs on. They used to be round like aaaagrrrrgggg donuts and always broke. Now they are rectangular and steel re-inforced.
Your right, and if he has a diesel he will need some new spark plugs as well
The thing is, if enough people use lcds, it potentially gets us out of another power plant. I wouldn’t be surprised if the state government wound up subsidizing that, as well, along with the other hassles of a power plant, so might as well help average citizens save a bit on the electric bill.
On one hand, I think the cfl are bad, but aren’t they the same as mercury fluorescent straight bulbs we’ve used for years?
The title to this post may have been true when it was first posted over 7 years ago but it is not true today if you are willing to purchase bulbs and fixtures directly from China. I started to retrofit my home about four years ago and found the cost for ordinary fixtures such as under cabinet and bathroom lights to be prohibitively expensive. I just looked and it still is. You do have to be careful to order lights and bulbs that work on 120V since the world standard is 220V.
The most common LED bulb in home improvement stores is the A19 bulb with an E27 base. That looks like and acts like a standard bulb but the design limits the lumen output to about the equivalent of a 100W bulb. Open one up and you will find a plate with the LEDs on that plate. The electronics to convert AC to DC and the right voltage are below that plate. If you use a LED corn bulb or chip-on-board bulb that limit can easily be exceeded and the LEDs are arrayed in a way that delivers light in all directions instead of just up with it being dispersed by the shell. The last 15W corn bulb I bought was about $2.50 and a similar COB bulb about $5.50 including shipping. The COB bulb is more efficient and brighter than the corresponding discrete LED bulb. These bulbs have been in use in my home for a couple of years and none have failed so far.
cob bulb:
COB bulb:
I used a bunch of very small 3W corn bulbs recently to retrofit some lighted Christmas decorations and the price per bulb was under a dollar. No way I could find that nearby.
Completely rebuilt my old stove top exhaust fan on the island. Motor seized, filter rotted, rusty, nasty, nasty.
Got motor unseized and stripped the metal and repaint. New filter and used a 4W corn bulb in WW cause the size fit. A19 was too fat.
Cant afford a new fan assy so I did what I can to save it with what I have on hand. Filter was $20, had everything else.
Before
After: and it sucks good with a pleasant tint, what else could a guy want.
In my opinion, the LED household screw in light bulbs haven’t really surpassed the CFLs in output/watt and the only real savings is in the longevity. The pain in changing out bulbs in hard to reach places as well as the color change and bluetooth capability of some are cool, but worth the price tag…??? I only have a few LED screw in bulbs in my home and they are in vaulted ceilings.
Who cares about what has slightly higher lm/W, LED bulbs are good because they have a good colour spectrum and pretty much never need to be replaced.
I’ve never had to replace an LED bulb in my life yet.
I get an 8 pack of 60w equivalent LED bulbs at our local Sam’s Club in Illinois, because the power company subsidizes them to reduce their need to expand generating capacity.
That’s 12.5cents per bulb.