LED Lighting

Chapter 7. Throw Out My CFL?

Perhaps at this point you are thinking that LED bulbs are the way to go. Maybe even that you should go out and buy some. Great…but if you’re not buying new lighting fixtures at the same time, then you probably already have bulbs. What should you do with them?

The general rule of thumb when it comes to green living and prudent ownership is to finish using whatever you have before buying something new. For example, you might be excited to get rid of your old car and hop into a shiny new plug-in hybrid, but that car will have to be manufactured and shipped, and then something will have to happen with your old car. So while the new automobile will be more efficient than your previous one, the power and cost savings will still take a long time to accrue. Using this logic, there is no reason to rush the purchase unless you expect a drastic difference immediately (maybe you were driving around in an 18-wheeler?). This scenario also applies to lighting, as well as any other trade-off made for the sake of efficiency.

Theories aside, what if you just want to make your purchase now? If that’s the case, you don’t really need to think twice about your incandescents. They are quite cheap and they last for about 1,000 hours (about 11 months of life at 3 hours of usage a day), so if you can’t remember installing them and they are in a room you use often, then they probably don’t have much life left anyway.

CFLs are trickier because these bulbs aren’t as cheap, they last ...