A 'Green' Law that Makes Sense

[dellinger63]

Starting the 1rst of the year 40 Watt and 60 Watt bulbs will be discontinued. Being a natural born cynic I decided to do the math behind the choice between hoarding or going LED.

A standard 40Watt bulb was priced at $1.50 and is advertised to last 2000 hrs.

A 7.5Watt LED substitute is available for $10.00 and is advertised to last 25,000 hours.

So while the new LED is 6.6 times the price it works 12.5 times longer.

Now I estimated my personal use of an individual light bulb at 5 hours per day and that translates into roughly a year and a month for the average life of the standard 40Watt bulb. The life for a LED bulb would be roughly 13 years and 7 months. So by switching to LED you nullify the extra cost in the 7th year and more importantly don't have to change it 12 times. A no brainer to go to LED.

Now power wise the 40watt bulb uses 40watts/hour or .04Kilowatt/hr. multiplied by 5 hours/use per day times 365 days equals 73 Kilowatts in a year. A 7.5watt bulb would use 13.7 kilowatts. With an average price of electricity at 13cents a Kw hour comes to a yearly cost of $8.76/year for the standard bulb and $1.78 for LED bulb. A $6.98 savings per year in electricity bills. Again no brainer to go LED.

Over a ten year period you'd save $3.50 on bulbs, almost $70 on electricity and probably the best advantage, avoid changing the bulb 9 times! Times as many lights you use!