Much effort has been made in recent years to replace conventional incandescent lights in the home with technology that does the job more efficiently. This campaign has primarily advocated the use of compact fluorescent bulbs. There is a new technology that works even better than these. Let’s take a look at the basic facts about LED replacement bulbs.
Light emitting diodes (LEDs) are not a new development. For years they were only available with narrow ranges of color, so they were used for specialized applications such as status lights. White light LEDs were developed fairly recently.
Incandescent lamps produce light by using electricity to heat a small filament of metal until it gets hot enough to glow, that is, until it becomes incandescent. Fluorescent lamps use electricity to stimulate a gas in a tube to produce ultraviolet light. This light is converted to visible light by fluorescent materials that coat the inside of the tube.
If you had 100 watts of LED lamps, it would take about 200 watts of fluorescent lamps to produce the same level of brightness. Doing it with incandescent lamps would take about 600 watts. The savings of electricity from using LED lamps instead of fluorescent lamps should be clear.
In addition to using less electricity, LED lights last a lot longer than fluorescent ones. Incandescents and fluorescents are glass tubes, but LEDs are not and are much more resistant to breaking. They also do not contain mercury, which fluorescent lights unfortunately do.
The main factor holding back the adaptation of LEDs is that they are much more expensive than the other two kinds of lights. Fortunately, as the production volumes increase and better manufacturing techniques are developed, this price difference should diminish. Hopefully they will become the target light source for future efforts to control the use of electricity.
LED replacement bulbs are on the market now that can be used as replacements for most fluorescent or incandescent bulbs. In many applications they can pay for themselves in energy savings over a few years, even with today’s high purchase prices. It probably won’t be long until they are the primary technology for home lighting.
GU10 LED bulbs are needed every now and then and we have those at a great price. Look at the LED bulbs right now and see what you think of it.