I decided to make the jump in my bathroom to replace my bathrooms’ bulbs with LED equivalents. I went with Lights of America ($13.70/3 at Sam’s Club) candelabra replacements for my existing Sylvania crystal lights. Here’s a visual comparison:
My replacement candelabra bulbs. 9 watts total, down from 240
So, the breakdown is simple, I save about $1.40/month on my electric bill, and these pay off in about 4 years (the image above is the replacement of one, and I use two sets of 6, so the replacement cost is double.
Qualities
Light quality is something a lot of people have trouble with in LEDs. They are often called ‘too cold’ by many, and I can understand the trouble. These are decently warm when compared to older LED bulbs, but the bulbs I had in there before weren’t the brownish tungsten kind anyway.
The amount of light differs greatly from what it says on the package. For one thing, the original bulbs were globes so the comparison isn’t completely fair here. Globes, and most incandescent bulbs in general, throw light in all directions. I find this wasteful in the case of hooded and recessed lights, and ugly in the case of the shadow cast in the “before” picture.
Since LEDs are almost unidirectional in their focus, the replacements only indirectly illuminate the wall behind them. This removes the harsh shadow in the photo, and also hides the cobwebs and streaks so evident in the top photo. Note to self: clean before taking pictures of a home project.
There is also less light being thrown by the bulbs. LoA put a sticker on the carton covering the original printing. I peeled the sticker back and underneath it was the claim that these bulbs were 40-watt equivalents. From the photos above, both taken at the same time and f/stop, it’s obvious that they are not as bright. I don’t think they took into account the narrow field of LEDs nor the lower lumen output of their chosen semiconductors. For my application, 240 watts of bare light was too much, and the replacements are probably about 70% as bright.
The build quailty also is under question after I read some complaints at Amazon of the units failing outright within months of ownership. If they do fail, I have kept the receipt and they have a 2 year warranty for defects. Even if left on solid for 2 years, you would only use about 1/2 of the expected life of the bulbs, which I think makes this a poor warranty.
Conclusion
Like I mentioned above, this is a decent stop-gap that will pay for itself in four years, if the bulbs last. If they don’t, I’ll have to find a more reliable manufacturer, but the damage will be done. These bulbs are a bit on the expensive side when compared to incalescent candelabra bulbs. They may have reliability issues, and they are certainly not 40 watt equivalents as the package claimed them to be.
But for my uses, and for my savings in energy, I’m wiling to give them a try.
4 Comments
Bought and installed the second set this morning. Now both bathrooms run on 9 watts, and I need to start my search for a new exhaust fan that doesn’t draw 70 watts.
Calculating savings for a new appliance applies here as well. The old wattage and new wattage multiplied by the yearly use factor and cost per kWh can give you an idea of the savings of replacement bulbs.
Sure LED’s are cool/geeky, but the luminous efficacy of the standard T1 LEDs in these sorts of devices sucks. They are at best equivalent to a CFL and at worst, half as efficient as a CFL.
The proper perspective is: LEDs (currently) do not pay for themselves relative to CFL’s…. But they are the future…. 150+ lumens/watt emitters are on the way. The price still needs to drop way further though.
I’d prefer something from lumileds or cree but there aren’t many bulbs of the incandescent kind being made in this size, let alone LED. The Lights of America bulbs are mostly crap from what I’ve read, but they are a stopgap. Even if these bulbs are completely inefficient with a PF of 0.5, they still only draw 1.5 watts each, and at 0.5 that would be 2.25 watts apparent draw. Not a big expense to me. The nine watts currently drawn (or 13.5 watts if they truly are inefficient) is far better than 240.
I couldn’t find CF that would work here, and If I did, they’d draw about 13w each, totaling 78 watts.
These were cheap enough for LEDs, and I’d love to try out the cree version from zetalux, but at $26 per bulb, and 3 watts per, I’m not too keen on making the plunge there.