5 reasons to switch to LED lighting

The Environmental Center

LED bulbs

There are simple ways you can start to reduce your electric bill that you can get started on right now!   If you are going to do just one thing this month, consider switching out your older incandescent light bulbs  with LED lights. If each household in switched 8 bulbs, our community would cumulatively save $2.6 million! Your light bulbs at your house aren’t just drops in the bucket—they make a difference!


 A light-emitting diode, or LED, is a type of solid-state lighting that uses a semiconductor to convert electricity into light. Today’s LED bulbs can be six-seven times more energy efficient than conventional incandescent lights and cut energy use by more than 80 percent.


 

Everyone knows that appliances, like your refrigerator and dishwasher, use electricity. However you may not realize lamps or bulbs and the fixtures in which they operate are also appliances. If we consider lighting as a single appliance, it can be much as 25 percent of your home’s electricity consumption. Switching to energy-efficient lighting is one of the fastest ways to cut your energy bills. Timers and motion sensors save you even more money by reducing the amount of time lights are on but not being used.

Here are 5 reasons you might consider switching to LED lighting in your home.

  1. Good-quality LED bulbs can have a useful life of 25,000 hours or more — meaning they can last more than 25 times longer than traditional light bulbs.
  2. When bulbs last longer, that’s less time you have to spend driving to the store and then installing new bulbs. Just think of all those hard-to-reach fixtures. Vaulted ceilings? This is a no brainer!
  3. Your lighting energy bill can be cut nearly in half if you replace 25 percent of your lights in high-use areas with LED’s. That will save you money, but you should consider the environmental benefits, too.
  4. And for the bigger picture: switching entirely to LED lights over the next two decades could save the U.S. $250 billion in energy costs, reduce electricity consumption for lighting by nearly 50 percent and avoid 1,800 million metric tons of carbon emissions.
  5. LEDs contain no mercury, and a recent Department of Energy study determined that LEDs have a much smaller environmental impact than incandescent bulbs. If you are swapping out CFLs in Bend you can recycle them by bringing them to the Hazardous Waste Facility at Knott Landfill, Batteries + Bulbs, and Home Depot.

Source: http://energy.gov/articles/top-8-things-you-didn-t-know-about-leds