The latest phenomenon sweeping over us now is LED lighting.

The super efficient, super lifespan alternative to all our lighting needs… or is it ? I hope to give you a basic understanding of what you need to know to embrace this new technology and what to avoid to overcome the pitfalls associated with LED’s.

First off, LED’s are not the same as your usual household bulb, they don’t work on the same voltage, they don’t work on the same type of electricity, so its not a straightforward swap as such. They are available as alternatives in nearly every form of bulb shape and type and come in various different shades of white as well as blue, green, orange, yellow, red, and so on.

Cost

The problem with LED’s is that because of there size they don’t give out much light, so most similar sized LED bulbs are not nearly as bright as there halogen household bulb counterparts. There are LED versions out there that will give you as much if not more light than your current bulb, but these are usually on the medium to higher range of the price spectrum. You will discover that the cost difference between what you traditionally buy €1-2 now costs €4-30 in an LED version. These costs however will work themselves out over time due to the longer life of the bulb and the savings in electricity bills.

Right or Wrong ?

LED lighting is initially more expensive to buy but one must consider:

• Most LED’s use between 2-10% of the electricity required to run standard halogen bulbs.
• The lifetime of an LED bulb can be anywhere from 10,000 hours to 50,000 hours in some cases.
• Standard halogens range from 1000- 3000 hours normally.
• This means your not replacing the LED’s every year in most applications so the initial cost of the LED is starts to make sense.

LED’s  run into a few problems when you try to straight swap them for low voltage downlighter bulbs,  LED’s use so little power that they do not meet minimum power level of transformer powering the connection so be aware that other changes may have to be made to your lighting circuit.

If you have any question about the technology please feel free to leave your comments below.


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