Listening to CBC Radio’s The Current this morning, I heard about CRS Electronics, a company in Welland, Ont., that’s making LED lighting for streetlights. Since LEDs are many times more efficient than fluorescent lighting, that’s a whole lot of money cities could save by having their repair crews install LEDs lights as conventional bulbs burn out. In the town of Welland, they replaced 65,000 street lights with LED lights.
The best way to compare efficiency of a bulb is to look at how much light you get out of it for the energy it uses. Incandescent bulbs give you about 15 lumens (a measure of light output) per watt. Halogen bulbs give you 24 lumens per watt. Fluorescent bulbs give you 50 to 100 lumens per watt. And LEDs give you 150 lumens per watt (and last for about 50,00 hours).
In my home, we have a mix of incandescent, fluorescent and LED bulbs. I’m finding that LED bulbs are becoming available in brighter and brighter styles, so they are not just for accent lighting anymore. I’ve noticed major lightbulb manufacturers, such as Philips, making LED bulbs for household lighting.
Have you tried making your home lighting more efficient? What do you think of the results?
