Wednesday, February 27

My first LED lamp

Since some of my CFL energy saving lamps are beginning to fail, decided to try a 6 Watt LED lamp, priced £9.99.

The equivalent wattage to an incandescent lamp is 31W, which is on the low side, so will be using it in a small room. You can buy 40W equivalents for about £13 to £15.


The stats on the package says it will last about 25 years and can cope with 50,000 on/off switch cycles. Doing a few rough calculations then I would say that in a typical room where a lamp will be switched on and off a few times each night, then 20+ years is probably a reasonable life time.

The thing is, it seems a bit outdated to compare the power consumption of LED lamps with incandescent bulbs. At some point no one will have experience of using incandescent lamps, so the comparison should in theory fade into history as a quirk that was required during the transition to low carbon energy.

Update: Have installed it in my small kitchen and I am pleasantly surprised. The light is a bit 'whiter', but certainly fine for the kitchen. Also tried it in the light fitting that I use all the time in the living room and I could not tell the difference between it and the CFL I normally use, other than the fact it was a bit dimmer. It looked just as warm behind the glass frosted lamp shade.

Based on that test, I will now be getting a 40W equivalent (or near that) LED lamp/bulb for the living room.



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