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Fine Homebuilding: The Magazine
Robyn Doyon-Aitken, producer
no recommendations
The problem with incandescent bulbs has always been that they waste a lot of energy in the form of heat. Lately, I’ve been trying to get used to the color of the light from the more efficient compact-fluorescent bulbs (CFLs) that I’ve screwed in all over my house, but sometimes I still feel like I’m in an operating room or a tollbooth. Plus, I’m not entirely comfortable with the fact that CFLs contain mercury, which can pollute the soil. Now a company called enLux Lighting manufactures a promising line of LED bulbs—including spot-, flood-, and downlights—to replace 65w bulbs in standard recessed ceiling fixtures.
LEDs (light-emitting diodes), which make light by moving electrons around in a semiconductor, produce very little heat and last a long time. They’ve been used in wristwatches and remote controls for years, and more recently in flashlights and car headlights. If you’ve seen some of these LEDs, you’ve undoubtedly noticed the intensity of the bright white (almost blue) light they produce. Instead of a single diode, enLux bulbs are RAGB (red, amber, green, and blue) multichip lamps. This combination of different-color diodes makes the color temperature of the light much less harsh. Environmentally safe, enLux bulbs are dimmable and are expected to last about 50,000 hours. The average cost is around $90 apiece. Before you decide that the antilunatic squad should throw a net over anyone crazy enough to spend that kind of money on a lightbulb, let’s do a little ciphering.
Using the cost calculator on the enLux Web site, I filled in the boxes for the costs of two different incandescent floodlight bulbs and my price per kilowatt hour for electricity. While the LED bulb won’t pay for itself for about seven and a half years (operating four hours a day), it will save me more than $300 in electricity over the 27 years of light remaining in its 50,000-hour life span.
posted in: Blogs, energy efficiency, electrical
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LED Lightbulbs for the Home
comments (0) April 29th, 2009 in Blogs
Robyn Doyon-Aitken, producer
no recommendations
LED lightbulbs are environmentally safe, produce very little heat, and last a long time.
Photo: Charles Miller
by Jefferson Kolle
R30 LED Floodlights
| ■ Manufactured by enLux Lighting ■ 480-733-8065; www.enluxled.com ■ Cost of bulb shown here: about $90 |
The problem with incandescent bulbs has always been that they waste a lot of energy in the form of heat. Lately, I’ve been trying to get used to the color of the light from the more efficient compact-fluorescent bulbs (CFLs) that I’ve screwed in all over my house, but sometimes I still feel like I’m in an operating room or a tollbooth. Plus, I’m not entirely comfortable with the fact that CFLs contain mercury, which can pollute the soil. Now a company called enLux Lighting manufactures a promising line of LED bulbs—including spot-, flood-, and downlights—to replace 65w bulbs in standard recessed ceiling fixtures.
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Using the cost calculator on the enLux Web site, I filled in the boxes for the costs of two different incandescent floodlight bulbs and my price per kilowatt hour for electricity. While the LED bulb won’t pay for itself for about seven and a half years (operating four hours a day), it will save me more than $300 in electricity over the 27 years of light remaining in its 50,000-hour life span.
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Want more information or a side-by-side comparison of CFLs and LED bulbs? Check out Rob Yagid's What's the Difference?: Green lightbulbs. |
posted in: Blogs, energy efficiency, electrical
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