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Attention all electricity bill payers! After almost 100 years of existence, LED lighting technology is finally a cost-effective investment for ambient lighting applications. If you have fluorescent tubes in your building, you are potentially paying more than 10 times what you should for lighting.
On average, a modern fluorescent tube fixture costs about $100 per year to operate. An LED bulb with the same amount and quality of light would cost only $20 per year to operate. The upfront cost to switch to LED’s is on average $150 per fixture. Since you are saving $80 per year per fixture in energy costs, the payback is less than two years!
LED stands for Light Emitting Diode and is a semiconductor that converts electricity into light. Invented in Russia in the 1920s, LEDs have typically been used in the United States mostly for electronic displays and mission-critical devices. Since the diodes are no larger than about a quarter of an inch in diameter, fixtures often require clusters or lines of multiple diodes. Switching to LED’s is a painless process. For spotlights, table lamps, accent lighting, and task lighting, an LED bulb can simply be screwed into the existing fixture. For fluorescent tubes, the process is also quick and simple and requires an easy snip and bypass of the existing ballast as well as the bulb replacement.
Not only do LEDs produce the same quality and amount of light, measured in lumens, they also have many added benefits over fluorescent lights. For example, LEDs do not contain mercury and light up instantly after you flip the switch. In addition to the giant energy savings, perhaps the most attractive benefit is their lifespan. Most LEDs last over 50,000 hours, which is 50 times longer than an incandescent light.
