A Decent Price Point For Household Led Light Bulbs

[strawboss 5]

After years of using CFL's (and storing the dead ones for proper recycling) I've found a decent price for a (hopefully) good quality LED light bulb.Efficiency always floated my boat!

$11.97 each at Home Depot, 60 watt equivalent and I bought a few to try them out then went right back and bought some more!

$108 for 8 all in....time will tell if I made a wise buy.

http://reviews.cnet.com/smart-home/philips...7-35833478.html

[turbomar 13]

Wow... This is new to me! I thought I was doing well with fluorescent bulbs???

[KurtMan 2]

I have LED pot lights in my new house, they required extra wiring and components. They do give off an enormous amount of light for their size.

[strawboss 5]

Wow... This is new to me! I thought I was doing well with fluorescent bulbs???

No worries there with CFLs but I'm always after the "perfect" bulb....you know, the one that will last 100,000 hours & produce 1600 lumens using 13 watts of electricity, and cost $5.00.... This and since I'm real clumsy not shatter when I drop it and then cause worry with traces of mercury vapour and my dog nosing after all the bits on the floor (something to think of with kids too), these new "lollipop" shaped bulbs are tough plastic! Edited March 15, 2014 by strawboss

[strawboss 5]

I have LED pot lights in my new house, they required extra wiring and components. They do give off an enormous amount of light for their size.

These new Philips bulbs have the extra components in the space just above the screw base,a pretty ingenious design.

[dmoonen 54]

Led prices have dropped quite a bit, when I bought mine around five years ago and imported them in from China I think I paid a couple grand but I bought a boat load. I have my full house, farm house, office and my mothers clothing store all done in various style and different "warm" shades. My mothers clothing store bill dropped by $140 a month from the change over. No different wiring just standard replacement bulbs too. The most common replacement was 50watt halogen gu10 spot lights with a 1.3watt led gu10 and also a 3.6watt one for larger areas. Highly recommended to change over.

[SmarteeBluey 10]

I have been using LED replacements in my house for over eight years now. The biggest advantage is the reduction in electricity bills (use less power than the CFL's). The next is that I haven't had to replace any since.At first I bought about three locally and was disgusted with the price.. Searched on Ebay and bought the rest of the household for the cost of the first three.The whole house for under $100I have been keeping my eye on the fluro tube replacements, too costly to be effective until recently. I bought a G13 or T8 LED replacement for my 2ft fluro. Surprised at how much light it put out, a brighter white than the standard fluro. No starter needed so no flicker on start up. Cost $12.50 from ebay. The larger one needs to come down in price a bit more.In the eight years I have had them in, they have paid for themselves 4 times over.

Edited March 16, 2014 by SmarteeBluey

[Silver 8]

I've bought a few in Costco in Colchester VT. The electric company subsidises them and I paid around $15 for three 60W equivalent.

[scwmcan 0]

It's too bad you got them a month early since Ontario Hydro ( or whoever) subsidized them this month, got ours at Costco for $ 5 each for gu10 and " regular" style bulbs, we go 14 for the family room to replace the halogen mini pots and three for the outdoor lights. I think once we run out of spares for the spiral bulbs as they burn out we will replace them with LEDs as we go from now on. I for one like the light and speed they power up better, and have never really like the flicker from them ( I seem to be one of those sensitive to such things).

[marchanna 115]

My entire house is outfitted with LED lights.

Replacing CFLs even before they burn out is worth it. A lot of CFLs cause voltage destabilization and can actually cost you more $$$ than incandescent bulbs. You won't be able to measure this with a regular multimeter or a kill-a-watt meter though; you'll need somewhat more sophisticated equipment such as Fluke's power quality monitors.

To illustrate this, I did an experiment about four years ago. The house I lived in then, I had been there for seven years, and had a well established electricity consumption history. From the first day I lived there I always had CFLs throughout the entire house. Inside one week (in March) I switched all the bulbs in the house over to incandescent 60w bulbs. Even though this was mid billing cycle, my next bill showed the lowest power consumption I had ever had in that house by about 15%. No other changes were made to our electrical demands. The next month was even lower (full billing cycle with 60w bulbs) and every other month after that remained lower than every month prior to the experiment. Many people refused to believe me, but I did the research ahead of time, and decided to do the experiment and the results proved the theory.

As the principle goes, a 15w CFL does have a lower wattage than 60w incandescent, but the electronic ballast in the CFL causes electrical noise on your home's service. One bulb has virtually no effect, but as you add bulbs the electrical noise gets worse exponentially. This noise reveals itself as unstable voltage with spikes and dips outside of the usable voltage range and which occur continually and are in individual durations of microseconds. As a result, there is a considerable amount of power that is consumed but unused. Apparently, LEDs do not have the same issue, but I haven't done an experiment to test this myself.

That is why I don't use CFLs.

[Utopiacdi 3]

Here's a link for a $5.00 off coupon, good until Dec 31, 2014. Read the coupon cuz there are some details you gotta follow...and make sure you get the right ones. I got some 60w equivalent and replaced the 5 CFL's in my kitchen ceiling fan with the LED's. Holy crap...you need sunglasses!! Really great light.

http://www.hydroone.com/MyHome/SaveEnergy/2014Coupons/5_Online_Coupons_ENG.pdf

It's only for Ontario though since it's done through Hydro One. Sorry.

Edited September 17, 2014 by Utopiacdi

[tolsen 630]

I recently bought a three of these 9 watt bulbs. Very good bright light for an unbelievably low price, I only paid GBP 2.49 each inclusive of air mail postage all the way from China.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/310993221191?_trksid=p2059210.m2749.l2649&var=610287956498&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT

The warm white seems to be the best for domestic applications. Instant light and may last a while before they burn out.

[marchanna 115]

I bought some 10w LED bulbs from China two and half years ago. The last one burnt out a couple months ago. The Philips LED bulbs I bought 5 years ago are still going strong.

I think the general issue with higher wattage LED bulbs is heat dissipation.

[FlossyTheSmart 81]

There are corresponding coupons for HydroOttawa coupons HERE.

I just wish you could get bright LED bulbs with a candelabra base.

[marchanna 115]

Did you check Costco?

[FlossyTheSmart 81]

I can't say I've seen anything brighter than a 40W equivalent, but I haven't explicitly looked recently.

[marchanna 115]

It's hard to get brighter than that in a small bulb. That being said it put in some 6w LED GU10 bulbs in place of 60w halogen GU10 and the actual light output is quite comparable. This was in a 3-bulb fixture.

[Francesco 71]

Yeah, I need 800+ lumen candelabra-base bulbs, and want decent CRI (85 or better) at a pleasant temperature (2800 K or so). I won't hold my breath.

[Lito 2]

Yeah, I need 800+ lumen candelabra-base bulbs, and want decent CRI (85 or better) at a pleasant temperature (2800 K or so). I won't hold my breath.

Glad to see someone mentioned Colour Rendering (CRI). This is not well known aspect of light that is essential and within budget, little comes even close to incandescent.

[darren 192]

One thing i find disappointing as well is that the more affordable LED bulbs are not dimmable. We have dimmers on 90% of the lights in our house, so dimmability is 100% essential (And it saves more money, too!)

[marchanna 115]

It's certainly a trade off - cheap LEDs equals poor light and non-dimmable.