YOU SUCK
My delivery fee + line charges + maintenance fee. Is 3 times that, and that's if I shut power off to the house.LED bulbs and electric savings
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YOU SUCK
My delivery fee + line charges + maintenance fee. Is 3 times that, and that's if I shut power off to the house.
maple1
Minister of Fire
Where2
Feeling the Heat
Sounds like the electric utilities make their investors proud off your neighborhoods... I found a neighborhood north of Dan and south of Maple where I only pay $10.99 per month, including the first 100kWh.
maple1
Minister of Fire
OK, I may stand to be corrected. I just pulled out my last bill, and it has listed base charge of 10.83/mo.
But still, a $17.99 power bill - power bill envy.
But still, a $17.99 power bill - power bill envy.
My gas bill was only 67.00. I love my insert. But the LED bulb thing is crazy. Can't believe my electric bill dropped so much. This time last year I paid 460 combined for electric and gas. 150 for electric and 310 for gas.
Mine
My electric portion dropped as well. I paid $48.03 with taxes for 218 kWh. I can't wait to see my usage for this summer.
(broken image removed)
My electric portion dropped as well. I paid $48.03 with taxes for 218 kWh. I can't wait to see my usage for this summer.
(broken image removed)
Is that even possible? The customer charge here in Pa is 16 something before you use even 1 Kw of juice.
Rearscreen
Minister of Fire
![[Hearth.com] LED bulbs and electric savings](https://www.hearth.com/talk/data/attachments/153/153995-2840c2b1b1fdbd688dcb5aee79df4f72.jpg?hash=3vBiVlTrt7 "[Hearth.com] LED bulbs and electric savings")
HD in CT had these on sale for under 4 bucks each. I bought about 50, I love them. Savings on electric bill (replacing cfls) has been substantial. Not touting these specifically, other LED's are just as good.
I havnt noticed any difference in my power bill since replacing CFLs with LEDs . In most case the LEDs use very close to the same watts as the Cfls. I havnt used Regular Inc bulbs in years.
Usually 14 W for the CFL's versus 9-12 W for the LED's. Very little difference.
Personally, I didn't notice a difference even when switching from incandescents. I calculate it should have been in the ballpark of $5/month savings, but since I estimated I was only spending $6-7/month on lighting, the savings disappear into the monthly variation.
Those Philips Slimstyle bulbs that Rearscreen mentioned get dismissed too easily because they're funny shaped. I think this led a lot of people to assume the light pattern is uneven, and look very, very closely for an unevenness at all. I've seen several negative reviews for them where the use held the bulb inches from a sheet of paper to highlight a dim line near the seam. What they never did, however, was hold it a realistic distance from an object, in which case the dim line disappears.
Honestly, I'm really impressed with how even the light is from that funny shape - not just around the bulb, but above and below it, too. It's also one of the lightest LED's I've seen, which is good in fixtures that sag under the weight of a heavy aluminum heat sink.
The only consistent downside I've heard of for it is audible humming when dimmed. I don't have any dimmers, so it's not a problem.
Rearscreen
Minister of Fire
Some LED's have a heavy base, these are very lite. Many people install these bulbs with old style SCR dimmers which will create a hum. But, like iamlucky13, I don't have any dimmers. One problem I had was installing in a small hole recessed can. I added a base extension and solved that problem. Also, it's funny, Philips had to say specifically on the package that the light comes out of it 360 degrees, their consumer research must have shown that many would think otherwise. Here's a comparison chart. (broken link removed)
I don't think so, but I haven't tried it. All the magnetic dimmers I've seen are for low voltage DC systems. The screw-base bulbs are designed for AC line voltage. I don't think the bulb will come on at all.
Currently, there is no perfect dimming technique for screw-base LED's. For commercial DC systems, I think there are, but the retrofitting forces screw-base lamp designers to compromise solutions of varying effectiveness, because they're trying to make a bulb with a high-efficiency AC-DC converter squeezed into a tiny package work with varying input from a lot of different dimmer designs.
So I think your best bet is to read reviews on bulbs to see if current users have issues with dimming buzz.
The expensive WiFi controlled bulbs like Philips Hue are probably an exception. Since the dimming circuit is matched to the bulb and under the designer's control, they should be able to get around some of the problems that arise with external dimmers.
Either way, the impression I have is most users find most bulbs make acceptably low levels of noise on dimmers, but not the Philips Slimstyle.
For dimmers, I've been lucky. Four sets of LED's on some very old dimmers, and all work fine without humming, except that one bulb hummed. Switched to another bulb to solve the hum.
As to wattage, My old 13W CFL's show a current draw of 0.3A on the base, which translates to 120V x 0.3A = 36W. Similar to the old twin 40W (and 32W T-8) florescent lights - both showed 100W on the Kill-o-watt.
As to wattage, My old 13W CFL's show a current draw of 0.3A on the base, which translates to 120V x 0.3A = 36W. Similar to the old twin 40W (and 32W T-8) florescent lights - both showed 100W on the Kill-o-watt.
If you're measuring amperage of devices with a switching power supply like CFL bulbs, your power calculation will probably be off due to the low power factor of devices like CFL's.
If you're measuring with a KillaWatt, that should be trustworthy because it supposedly measures power factor and separately reports volt-amps (not corrected for power factor) and Watts (corrected for power factor).
Other sources that have compared CFL's and LED's have reported actual power draw accounting for power factor in the ballpark of the manufacturer claims. For example, I like LEDbenchmark.com because they do consistently detailed tests of a lot of bulbs (the downside is they're in Australian, so most of what's on the US market gets missed). Here's their CFL test:
http://www.ledbenchmark.com/display.php?id=76&name=Mirabella+13W+CFL
If a CFL is actually drawing 36 Watts, I wouldn't expect it to last more than an hour or two. That's almost 3 times the energy as specified. It should be heating up hundreds of degrees and burning out - it's roughly the same amount of energy as a 40 W incandescent, and you know how hot those get.
If you're measuring with a KillaWatt, that should be trustworthy because it supposedly measures power factor and separately reports volt-amps (not corrected for power factor) and Watts (corrected for power factor).
Other sources that have compared CFL's and LED's have reported actual power draw accounting for power factor in the ballpark of the manufacturer claims. For example, I like LEDbenchmark.com because they do consistently detailed tests of a lot of bulbs (the downside is they're in Australian, so most of what's on the US market gets missed). Here's their CFL test:
http://www.ledbenchmark.com/display.php?id=76&name=Mirabella+13W+CFL
If a CFL is actually drawing 36 Watts, I wouldn't expect it to last more than an hour or two. That's almost 3 times the energy as specified. It should be heating up hundreds of degrees and burning out - it's roughly the same amount of energy as a 40 W incandescent, and you know how hot those get.
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