NEWS ARTICLE ARCHIVESPower Saving LED Lights from Creative LED SystemsVol 1 : TIPS ON SAVING ON YOUR POWER BILLS BY SWITCHING TO LED LIGHTS.. Obama pitches his energy plan as a win-win for the economy and the environment. President Obama has made energy efficiency a priority within the first seven months of his term.
One of the fastest roads to energy efficiency is to reduce consumption and the simplest
approach to energy conservation is to change a light bulb. Retrofitting an entire building has
the biggest energy savings potential and will significantly reduce your carbon footprint. Referenced "Obama Energy Efficiency & Lighting retrofit. http://greenecon.net It's true that one of the biggest costs in running a household or commercial building is the cost of electricity needed to power lighting....until now. Most buildings contain a combination of halogen (down lights and outdoor floodlights), incandescent (such as common light bulbs), fluorescent tubes, Sodium Vapour (such as outdoor floodlights and warehouse Hi bay lights) plus various other types of lighting. These can all be replaced now with LED lighting technology, and the savings in energy usage can be up to 90%...but how?
LED (which stands for light emitting diode) is a new form of lighting that offers immense
benefits to the user and the environment .Replacement bulbs of all types are now available and
generally fit right back into the same socket as they were removed from. Does the latest generation of energy-saving light bulbs really save energy?
A comprehensive study conducted by Osram, the German lighting company, provides evidence
that they do. Until the release of the report Dec 2009 the answer remained unclear. To calculate what is known as a Life Cycle Assessment of LED lamps, Osram compared nearly every aspect of the manufacturing process, including the energy used in manufacturing the lamps in Asia and Europe, packaging them, and transporting them to Germany where they would be sold. It also looked at the emissions created in each stage, and calculated the effect of six different global warming indexes.
Now back to saving money .... While you're checking out light usage, look at the wattage of the bulbs you use in the lamps and overhead lights. You can probably go down a few watts: say, from 75 to 60 without noticing it too dramatically. But switch to LED and suddenly you can go from a 50-watt halogen bulb to a 5 or 7-watt model with very similar light output.
There is very little heat generated by LED too... (typically halogen bulbs can reach temperatures
up to 320 C and have been known to cause countless fires).
This means after the switch to LED you can run AIR CONDITIONING at lower speed and higher
temperatures saving even more money and CO2 gases.
If you have Halogen lights chances are you have around 50 installed in the average sized 3-
bedroom house. If these run daily for around 5 hours they will cost you around $820.00 per
year to run (based on a conservative rate of 0.18c per kwh). You can save a considerable amount of electricity by unplugging unused electronics. Many products still draw power even when they are not turned on. These items can contribute up to 25% of your electric bill! Save more "green" - turn off the lights when you leave a room. You can also use floor lamps instead of the overhead lights when you're working in one area (reading in bed, for example, or watching television).Its called task lighting and instead of lighting a whole room , concentrate on the tasks that require lighting. Under cabinet lighting in the kitchen or a bench light in the workshop are examples. Task lighting eliminates shadows and eases strain on your eyes. Lets not forget the humble dimmer. Dimmers provide an additional way to save energy and money by allowing you to control the strength of the light. With most LED lights, electronic type dimmers need to be used instead of conventional incandescent types. Dimmers create a mood in a room .The dimmer the light, the less energy used, and the greater the savings. DO they make all types of LED replacement lights now - even Fluro tubes?...The answer is YES!!! New developments in LED technology have made the humble FLUORESCENT tube outdated. While the fluro tube is relatively efficient by itself, compared to LED tubes, it is a waste of energy and a major contributor to green house gases. In conventional fluorescent tubes, there is a harmful gas containing mercury vapour, when this is heated by a tungsten cathode, electrons react with phosphor salts inside the tube and cause light. Over 30% of this reaction is in the form of wasted heat. LED on the other hand is the most energy efficient form of lighting available due to its longevity and low heat emission, coupled with solid-state technology. So here a conventional T8 Fluorescent tube is 36 watts and lasts maybe 10000 hrs, an LED version is around 16 watts and runs for 50 000 hrs. That means conventional T8 tubes will be replaced 5 times for every one LED tube. These maintenance and replacement costs, not to mention wasted productivity, can now be a thing of the past. By switching to LED, you have a cost effective solution for both profits and the environment. They are great for all types of illumination such as offices, factories and warehouses, car parks - in fact, anywhere a conventional T8 tube is in use. These tubes fit directly into existing or new Fluorescent tube housings (known as battens ) and require the starter and ballast to be removed. The ballast and starter alone contribute around 7 watts of wasted energy. Led tubes run on direct 240v AC current, do not flicker and will run at extremes of temperature ( -20 to + 60 degrees c).
So to summarise how we can all help the environment and save on our power bills in the
process... lets look at it again.
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