How to Save Money by Switching to LED Lightbulbs
Change your lightbulbs, change your life
When I first bought my house in the San Francisco Bay Area late last year, the place was like a museum of energy inefficiency. Nearly every light fixture in the house used a different kind of power-hogging incandescent or halogen lightbulb. When we got our first monthly electric bill, I nearly fell over — it was $868.
I knew that we needed to make a change. So I researched, bought, and installed modern, highly efficient LED replacements for every fixture in our home’s motley collection of random lights. Through this simple change, we saved $1,384 per year, reduced our potential carbon emissions by almost 4,000 pounds, and dramatically improved the quality of light in our home.
Here’s how we updated each fixture — and how you can save hundreds by swapping out the lights in your own home for modern LEDs.
LED basics
Incandescent bulbs produce light by running electricity through a thin wire filament. They’ve changed little since Thomas Edison popularized them in the 1800s. Incandescent bulbs produce beautiful light, but they’re also wildly inefficient. Much of the power they consume is wasted as heat. The same goes for halogen bulbs, which use a filament in a special gas.
