Saving: Cut £232 Off Your Energy Bill?

LED lighting can slash your energy usage this winter. The comparison website comparethemarket.com has found that consumers using LED bulbs pay about £146 each year on energy for lighting while those with halogen bulbs spend £378.

For most people kept in the dim by regular energy-saving bulbs the idea of buying expensive LED bulbs seems just an environmental fad. But many of these bulbs are estimated to last as long as 20,000 hours, so if they are used for about five hours a day they could last a decade.

A common recessed GU10 halogen bulb is estimated to last just 2000 hours – and that is without classic pitfalls like a spell of humid weather or accidentally touching the glass when fitting it.

The LED equivalent lasts 10 times longer and will use 85% less energy mainly due to running at a cooler temperature.

The popular modern interior style of having a ceiling full of spotlights means that having to replace individual bulbs can become a tedious chore even without the financial implications and so the extended lifespan will free up many weekends that might otherwise be spent up a ladder.

An enormous number of residential buildings in London have a subterranean level of basements in which people’s lives can be lived in constant gloom, making adequate lighting an expensive luxury. Cheap and bright lighting will be an even better investment for those people.

A Difficult Switch?

While 53% of people realise that LEDs can save them money a third of people believe that they are too expensive to buy in the first place, according to the comparethemarket.com survey. Nevertheless the consumer advice publication Which? says prices have dropped by about £2 in just a year.

At John Lewis a single Philips LED GU10 bulb costs upwards of £4 compared to £2.95 for a traditional Calex halogen GU10 but a multipack of six LED GU10s works out at just £2.66 per bulb.

As for the worry of installation most common LED bulbs go straight into existing light fittings. There is also nothing wrong with gradually replacing old blown bulbs with LEDs over a longer period of time rather than replacing a whole room or home at once.

Colour Temperature

The new bulbs have the confusing addition of temperatures that indicate their colour. The most common are “cool white”, “daylight” and “warm white” and the higher the Kelvin value of the bulb, measuring its heat, the whiter its light will be.

Warm white offers between 2700-3200 Kelvins, daylight sits between 4000-4500, and cool white consists of 5000-6200 Kelvins. Warm white suits comforting environments like the living room and bedroom while cool white is much sharper for kitchens and bathrooms.

Some suppliers even offer the novelty of colour-changing bulbs at a considerably higher cost.

A further complication that affects most Londoners who rent their homes is that the investment in LED bulbs will likely benefit future tenants at the initial buyer’s expense. If all bulbs are functioning when a tenant takes over a property any replacements are their responsibility. Sadly few tenants are lucky enough to have a landlord willing to reimburse the time and costs of upgrading all the lights in a property to last 10 years but it is still worth negotiating on the basis that future renters will be attracted to a property with lower energy bills.

by Stewart Vickers

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