Of course the deniers will object to these.

CFLs contain 1% of the mercury present in a normal household thermometer, the type which we all happily put in our mouths when we're ill.

And yet CFLs are apparenly a major toxic health hazard.

LEDs will turn out to have some unacceptable flaw - real, imagined or cooked up.

All LED technology faces these challenges and there are plenty of LED bulbs out there that do the same (although they tend to look different). My problem with this piece is that it says you can save £x amount per annum. There are so many assumptions built into this (most of which are not applicable in the real world) that it gives false hope. I would predict that most people would save around £30-£40 per annum in reality. If people were using around £280 per annum on electricity in lighting the best solution would be to turn them off!! LED are better because their colour rendering index is better and also because they last longer. This is a better argument than energy saving. A better quality of light can be more important.

"If a house was to replace 25 60W incandescents with 25 LifeBulbs - they would save £232.25 per year in electricity alone."

I'm not sure about the maths there.

25x £20 = £500.

To save £232.25 your annual electricity bill for lighting alone would need to be £732.25.

"Should last 10 years..."

If I am going to spend £20 on a light bulb I need a guarantee that it will last that long. I am an early adopter and changed many of my GU10 (50W) for 1.2W LEDs about 4 years ago. They're great for places like toilets and corridors where frankly one just needs light to see rather than do things (if you see what I mean) However, out of eleven of them, two went within 2 years even though they are sold as having a life of 30,000 hours.

I think the manufacturers need to back up their claims with a replacement if they fail prematurely, otherwise they'll just get a bad name. Too often, important developments like this are damaged by cheap Far Eastern knock-offs just designed to take money off people. Often the big DIY sheds are to blame for this. Something new comes along form a reputable European manufacturer and they just take one out to Hong Kong and get it made for 50 cents in China.

My electrician always tells me to avoid the big sheds' electrical stuff and get trade gear from him, because he knows that I'll be much more satisfied with it over time. He's right.

I've just moved into a house and now have lots of spare incandescents that I've replaced with a mix of LEDs and CFLs.

If you go to EBay rather than B&Q you can find LEDs cheaply. I just bought 10 4W GU10s for £35. To early for these ones but I find in general EBay quality at least as good as the sheds. Dimmable LEDs tend to be a bit more expensive, so best avoid dimmers.

I'm not sure about the maths there.

25x £20 = £500.

To save £232.25 your annual electricity bill for lighting alone would need to be £732.25.

I suppose he's taking into account the estimated 10-year lifetime of the LifeBulbs, so the £500 for 25 bulbs is equivalent to £50 per year.

Even so, saving £232.25 per year still sound a lot. The Energy Saving Trust says lighting accounts for 8% of the average bill, so that level of saving implies a total bill around the £3000 mark.

That only counts if you assume that you're saving the cost of the bulb as part of that saving. They haven't actually stated that so I'm not sure why you would make that assumption.

The maths really works a little something like this.

£232.25 @ 14p/kwh = 1659kwh.

The differential between the Zeta bulb @8wph and an incandescent bulb @60wph is 52wph.

Each kwh will power 19.2 of those 52wph differences. Multiplied by 1659kwh will give you 31903 hrs of operation of the differential. Divide that by 25 (the number of bulbs exchanged gives you 1276 hrs of operation of the differential. Divide that by 365 means that Zeta are assuming that on average a lightbulb is used for 3.5 hours every day.

If you don't have 25 bulbs in your house, or use them for an average of less hours per day then your savings will differ but ultimately their maths is completely sound and uses reasonable assumptions.

Of course what makes me laugh is that despite 100w bulbs being "phased out" I still see them on sale from a lot of independant stores. I imagine 60w bulbs will be on sale for years to come as retailers happily take money from the die hard fans. I found a bag of twenty 100w bulbs in the house I've just rented but they seem a bit silly to me so I took them down the tip.

JR Woodman says that two of his LED bulbs lasted two years. If assuming that now four years on from starting to use them, they have all stopped working then the likely average life is around the three year mark.

A saving of £232.25 against a £500 installation cost means that your payback period is roughly two years and one and a half months. Even with bulbs not lasting as long as advertised, the savings would be roughly equal to £200 over those four years. Of course some bulbs will have to be replaced soon than others incurring further costs, but each time one of replaced those bulbs exceeds a lifetime of 2.15 years then it starts net savings again. This is where payback gets a bit complicated but ultimately it's hard to argue that it isn't worth it.

I was under the impression that LED's last as long as the semiconductor materials do.

That's around 100 years of normal use??

Presumably the peripheral controllers do NOT last, just as with the miniature fluorescent tubes. The latter just go dim after several switchings.

So perhaps it is a case of integrated electronics all round.

Please correct me if I am wrong.

An assumption that every one of 25 lightbulbs in a house is used for 3.5 hours per day doesn't sound very reasonable to me (unless you're the sort of person who leaves all the lights on all the time), and it does result in the potential savings figure being extraordinarily high, considering the Energy Saving Trust's estimate that the average household spends 8% of its bill on lighting.

Surely it would be better to quote, say, a potential saving attainable by swapping one incandescent bulb for one LifeBulb used for x hours per day? (Though that would mean the potential saving per year would be a lot lower than the cost of the bulb.)

Who on earth uses 60w lightbulbs, it's like the 70's all over again

If people were using around £280 per annum on electricity in lighting the best solution would be to turn them off!!

WELL SAID! Turn it off or Switch it off is BETTER than changing that bulb.

Reducing consumption beats redirecting consumption.

Get up with the sunrise, and go to bed at sunset, and you will have a healthier immune system and better defenses against lifestyle diseases - read Rhythms of Life. Not to mention you save loads of money by not wasting it on stupid unnecessary entertainments, such as I am doing by being on the Internet?

"Get up with the sunrise, and go to bed at sunset,"

What! 15 hours in bed in winter? 5 hours in bed in summer? How's that healthy?

This is good news. Glad to learn about such developments.

And it's great to see that they are being made here in the UK. Clearly the frequent rumours of the UK not being innovators, or environmental innovators, are greatly exaggerated. Well done!

Of course the deniers will object to these.

Deniers of what?

If they really give the same quality of light as incandescent bulbs, come on immediately, and actually have the lifetime the manufacturer is claiming, as well as offering energy efficiency, what's not to like?

I haven't got 25 bulbs used for lighting my fairly spacious house. I can't save the amount of energy stated as none of them a tungsten filament bulbs.

LEDs sound good, but seem ever so expensive compared to CFTs.
The horrible bulbs that seem to take ages to get to full brightness have got a terrible long lifespan, but I'm too mean to replace them.

B

CFLs contain 1% of the mercury present in a normal household thermometer, the type which we all happily put in our mouths when we're ill.

Can you still buy such things? I thought they were pretty much universally digital electronic devices now. Ours is, anyway, and has been for years.

And yet CFLs are apparenly a major toxic health hazard

They aren't. They're just expensive and give poor quality light. I tried one in my home office, but it was surprisingly uncomfortable to work under and I replaced it with a halogen.

LEDs will turn out to have some unacceptable flaw - real, imagined or cooked up.

Like many things, they may be fine when made in small quantities but present problems when made in mass market quantities. You know, like wind turbines, which are great when relatively rare (and put in places that actually make economic sense), but present much larger environmental problems when planned on a very large scale through the despoliation caused by mining rare earth metals for the magnets. Or indeed the excess pollution and waste from the hot backup power needed to support them.

Whether that will happen with LEDs depends largely on the semiconductor chemistry used, the type of plastic encapsulation, and so on.

Incandescent bulbs are certainly inefficient, but they do have the advantage of being made from cheap, readily available materials with no shortage of supply. If that also applies to LEDs, then good. If it doesn't, then there is a real problem, not an imagined one.

"The airflow required for natural cooling ... lead us to a design the lamp with holes through the structure."

You mean "led us to a design"!

http://www.gcse.com/english/lead.htm

Look forward to seeing it next year.

My electrician always tells me to avoid the big sheds' electrical stuff and get trade gear from him, because he knows that I'll be much more satisfied with it over time. He's right.

I wonder where it's made?

I was under the impression that LED's last as long as the semiconductor materials do.

Like anything else, they have multiple points of failure. As well as the semiconductor material, there is the plastic encapsulation and the mechanical and electrical connection. Semiconductor life is related to temperature & adequate cooling is very necessary for power LEDs. The power controller is also a semiconductor & has its own multiple points of failure.

I have used LED lights now for some time. Initially got some GU10 that were 3 Watts but gave out light of around 15-20 Watts. Was not so happy with them. I think the technology has moved in leaps since then. I have just brought some GU10 LED 4 Watts that are SMD. These are really equivilent to 50 Watt Bulbs. I got these bulbs from Wholesale LED Lights in Leicester. I think this just shows that the bulbs will get better as time goes on.

It's reasonable because it's achieveable. A family of four in a three bedroom house could conceivably have 25 bulbs in it at 60w a piece and a combination of usage patterns could lead to an average of 3.5 hours use per bulb in a day (more likely some would do more and others less). Having worked in the Energy Saving industry, I have come across claims based on for less likely or credible assumptions Commonly those assumptions weren't readily published, at least this company is frank about the information on which the calculations are based. Of course if your assumed unit price per kwh is higher then the average hours per day per bulb drops approaching a more realistic level.

It's reasonable because it's achieveable.

It might be achievable, but it doesn't seem to tie in with what the Energy Saving Trust says, about the average household spending 8% of its electricity bill on lighting, as the average electricity bill is not in the region of £3000 per year.

In addition to being efficient in absolute terms there is another great attribute of this type of bulbs. By in large the light is cast directionally.

This means its much more efficient at putting the light where its actually needed. Think of street lights and the amount of scattered light in backyards that is not only wasted but causes what is known as light pollution.

see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_pollution

As someone who loves to look up at the sky at night and see world as our ancestors did and get that old sense of wonder I loathe this waste and nuisance, especially the one over the back fence. Its a problem even in Australia but have a look at the maps of Europe - a dark sky is now all but unobtainable.

Good idea. Unfortunately, I'll have to quit my job(railway). That's what I love about the Guardian; it's all so grounded.

Does the bulb have to be that ugly?

I had a CFL smash in my bathroom, lovely, and to the above poster comparing what's in a thermometer compared to a light bulb, good grief, people don't have tens of thermometers in their houses and the likelihood of breaking one compared to a bulb is negligible.

Oh, and last time I looked for a light bulb the one I wanted, i.e. bright enough to read by was TEN EUROS.

Lastly, I can't get the new CFL bulbs into some of my old lights, expensive art deco fittings not IKEA tat and where I can find ones that fit they look like crap.

What a scam.

Damn bulbs. How they can call some of these things 'light bulbs' is a disgrace, they should be prosecuted under the trades description act, I've seen more light from candles than some CFL bulbs.

Really really lastly, I've had ones, at the aforementioned five to ten euros a pop fail within days of purchase! FM I hate these things, I'd vote to leave the EU on CFLs alone.

I have a house full of CFL bulbs, very low electricity bills for decades, and have not experienced any difficulty such as the hapless trolls moan about. I look forwards to replacing them with LED bulbs when the economics are right for me.

Does it really matter? Afterall, it's not like you'll be able to tell when it's on and I hope I'm not wrong in thinking that the overwhelming majority of us have better things to do than stare at lightbulbs when they're off, many of which will be tucked away behing a shade.
There are many functional objects that are ugly (draining racks, toothbrushes, just about any car made by Rover), it's the function that they serve that is important.

Do you realise that this article is about LED bulbs. Would you vote to leave the EU on the basis of those as well and why?

Off the top of my head I have about 10 bulbs in my living room. Why would I want to go out and spend £200 on lightbulbs just to do one room. You can buy lightbulbs fo 20p ffs.

:-) I know (re LEDs), bloody CFL scam just makes me furious, especially after finding that on exploding they release mercury vapour, imagine how many are making their way into landfills and hence the water table.

Don't bother telling me that the law requires correct disposal.

Because over the longer term you would save more money through running costs than you would spend on the initial outlay.

Interesting fact. Because of the proportion of coal fired power that we have in this country, more mercury is released into the environment to power the old-fashioned filament bulbs than to power a CFL added to the amount of mercury contained in it.

All that lovely mercury, being released into the atmosphere, coming down to ground, working it's way into the water table. Brilliant. That old-fashioned lightbulb scam makes me furious.

Isn't it about the concentration level?

I've had ones, at the aforementioned five to ten euros a pop fail within days of purchase! FM I hate these things, I'd vote to leave the EU on CFLs alone.

Really? I mean, really?? Since you don't seem too keen on the EU why are you paying for your bulbs in Euros, and why are you paying so much? When I visit the UK from Europe I stock up at 99p and I've got loads spare as they are so reliable.

I can't help feeling that it's not the bulbs that are the problem here..

Yes, absolutely. But as I understand it, mercury particles that are released into the atmosphere from power stations and come to the ground through gravity and precipitation offer similar water table contamination concentration to levels that which might come from landfill sites.

I think it's worth considering that mercury can be present in many household items that we consider desirable such as thermostats, fridges, freezers, washing machines (basically anything with a temperature sensitive or tilt switch), antique mirrors, paints manufactured pre-1992, older models of microwave (with mercury vapour bulbs) tins of tuna and other sea/ocean fish/crustaceans. There's also mercury in big flourescent tubes as well as the aforementioned C(compact)FLs. They even used to put it in your teeth (fillings). If you're worried about mercury poisoning then you should get rid of all of these things as well. On the otherhand if you have a broken bulb you could minimise exposure by cleaning up carefully and ventilating the room in accordance with guidelines. CFLs break even less frequently than old-fashioned bulbs so you're really unlikely to experience harmful exposure from this.

It seems incredible that so many people stick to a technology that is outdated and inefficient like the classical bulb, while at the same time sticking to "new" car models, or whatever technical gimmick the Tea Party finds acceptable as a symbol of true capitalist resource wating.
Mercury all around the world, computers use rare metals, heavy metals, and if not properly handled give rise to a toxic waste. However, deniers dont shun new technolgies. Not to mention tv.
As other posts point out, the real thing is for manufacturers to back their affirmations with real facts: I have also bought two 20€ CFL that lasted less than a year without heavy use (one from Ikea and another from Faro), but I'm quite happy with the others. The same should be with LEDs: if they are to be much more expensive, they should give you an equivalent benefit.
That's the core, not urban tales about mercury

LED alternatives are certainly interesting,
albeit with their own difficulties in omnidirectional brightness
but why just copy incandescent light quality, instead of using its own inherent advantages?
Why reinvent the wheel?

All lighting has advantages, including simple incandescents, and halogen incandescent replacements will be banned too, by 2016, on EU norms.

The object is to reduce electricity usage (especially coal)
and to reduce CO2 emissions.
Hello?
Light bulbs don't burn coal, or release any CO2.
Power plants might.
If there's a problem, deal with the problem.

As US Dept of Energy and official EU statistics show, the overall savings are very small, 1-2% of grid energy, as referenced on ceolas.net ,
compared to actually dealing with electricity generation, grid distribution and alternative consumption reduction (usage waste, rather than usage choice) .

But OK: This is all about reducing electricity use.
So coal, coal electricity, or any electricitry, could simply be taxed
(and Govmt tax income could help pay for insulating poorer homes)
- no need for petty usage rules.

Similarly, if bulbs really had to be targeted, they could be taxed,
and help subsidise cheaper energy saving alternatives:
Govmt income, equilibrated markets, lowered incandescent sales, and consumer choice all achieved - same could be done with all other energy effciciency regulations that reduce consumer choice.

Better still is simply to encourage competition,
all along the electricity supply chain:
Electricity companies and light bulb manufacturers then strive to keep down their own energy costs, while manufacturers are also pushed to make energy saving products that people actually want to buy (and have always wanted, since savings are a marketable advantage "Expensive to buy but cheap in the long run" - look at Duracell battery rabbit commercials!)
Unfortunately, lighting manufacturers instead successfully lobbied for an EU ban on cheap unprofitable incandescents, to sell their more profitable expensive wares.

It seems incredible that so many people stick to a technology that is outdated and inefficient like the classical bulb, while at the same time sticking to "new" car models

Why is it "incredible" that people choose a mixture of old and new products? Marmite was first produced in 1902, but people still buy it today.

Your perception of what is "outdated and inefficient" is evidently not universal. If people perceived the new bulbs to be better, they'd buy them without the need for the old ones to be banned. AFAIK, no old car models had to be banned to get people to buy new ones.

Hi gubulgaria

Of course the deniers will object to these.

Nope. Anthony Watts of Wattsupwiththat was promoting LED lighting a year ago:

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/02/07/swapping-my-lights-fantastic/

They say the energy of normal bulbs is "wasted" as heat. It's not wasted; they help to heat your home! Without them you have to tun the thermostat up a degree or so...

In a way, you can take LED's as an interesting case study in how societies can improve despite falling GDP.
If all light bulbs were replaces by LED bulbs, everyone would spend less money on manufactured goods (the bulbs) and we would collectively waste less energy. The figures are open to debate, but I reckon a 50w incandescent can be replaced by a 5 watt LED. So for the world as a whole, manufacturing output, consumer spending and fossil fuel extraction would all fall, and as a result GDP would also fall. Yet our lives would be unarguably better.
It's a new paradigm, and one that we all need to start giving a lot more attention to: become richer by wasting less and making better stuff, not by making more money and spending it on more stuff.

You're right that they do contribute to heating the home but utterly wrong that they contribute a "degree or two" to the warmth of the home. The thermal product of an old-fashioned lightbulb wouldn't be sufficient to provide that much heat to even a small room in a house. As well as being a wasteful way to provide light, they are a wasteful way to provide heat. You would benefit more by taking the electricity saving from using a low energy light bulb and putting it through a dedicatated electrical heating device. However, as electricity is less efficient than gas central heating (sourced from the Sutherland Tables) for heating a home then you would benefit even more by taking the economic savings from low energy bulbs and putting into gas costs for central heating if you have this in your home.

Don't get drawn in by bad science.

Because over the longer term you would save more money through running costs than you would spend on the initial outlay.

I would rather save £20 today than a few quid over the next 10 years. If the bulbs lst that is.

Does anyone know if the work on a dimmer switch?

I like my dimmer switches and the cost efficient 20p incandescent lightbulbs work just fine on them.

It's more than a few quid though. Over the course of ten years (for which it would be reasonable to expect LED bulbs to last) you could easily expect to save a conservative estimate of £1000 and that's after covering the initial outlay. And if energy prices rise (I can't imagine that happening, can you?) then you'll save even more.

Still, I'm sure your energy provider will be kind to you for thinking about helping out with their massive profits and will reward you for your generosity.

Hi KitchenMagpie,

You're right that they do contribute to heating the home but utterly wrong that they contribute a "degree or two" to the warmth of the home.

Firstly, that depends on how may bulbs you have...
Secondly, isn't it also "bad science" to suggest that the energy is "wasted"? It may not be the most efficient way of going about things (granted), but the law of conservation of energy says you can't have it both ways!

On the first - I concede that increasing the number of bulbs could provide enough heat to contribute "a degree or two". However, without going into precise calculations, I would estimate that the number of bulbs required to achieve this would render a room what might commonly be considered uncomfortably bright.

On the second. The word I used was "wasteful". I realise that this is decending into semantics but the definitions are importantly different and wasteful comes down on the side of efficiency where as wasted would, as you rightly point out, contravene the laws of physics.