Fastlec

I have just swapped over my old, energy hungry, 60w GLS light bulbs at home and replaced them with some top of the range, fresh to the market, professional, proper expensive LED ones.

The LED lamps in this example can be seen on the Fastlec website here

I wanted to look at an extreme case, to see if the figures still work and to ensure that we were achieving at least an equivalent level and quality of light output in a domestic situation. These particular lamps currently retail at £29.99, so they really are at the top end of the market. That being said they are incredibly bright (brighter than the 60w ones they replace), start instantly and the colour is perfect.

Average usage of a domestic light bulb is up for argument, but its generally taken at 4 hours per day. 4 hours x 365 days gives us 1460 hours per year

Old 60W GLS Light Bulbs:

• The old 60w GLS bulbs work out at 0.06KW (60 / 1000)
• 0.06KW x 1460 hours = 87.6 kilo watt hours (these are the units we are all billed for on our electricity invoice)
• Taking electricity costs at 15p per KWh, that’s 87.6 x .15 = £13.14 per light bulb per year.
• I changed 11 light bulbs in the house x £13.14 = £144.54 cost of the electricity for all 11 bulbs for one year.

New 11W Performance LED Light Bulbs:

• The new 11w LED bulbs work out at 0.011KW (11 / 1000)
• 0.011KW x 1460 hours = 16.06 kilo watt hours (these are the units we are all billed for on our electricity invoice)
• Taking electricity costs at 15p per KWh, that’s 16.06 x .15 = £2.41 per light bulb per year.
• I changed 11 light bulbs in the house x £2.41 = £26.51 cost of the electricity for all 11 bulbs for one year.

So thats £144.54 – £26.51 = £118.03 electricity cost saving each year (1460 hours).

The life of the LED performance lamp is 30,000 hours. 30,000/1460 = 20.55 Years

So the total electricity saving for whole life of the 30,000 hour LED bulbs is actually £2425.51 IF ENERGY COSTS STAYED THE SAME FOR 20 YEARS! In reality, with gradual increases in energy costs over that period, the saving is likely to be double to triple that.

• The 11 LED Lamps cost £29.99 each inc VAT which gives us a total cost of £329.89.
• 11 x 60W GLS standard domestic light bulbs costing 30p each gives us £3.30 but they only last an average of 1000 hours so you will need to re-buy them 30 times to cover the 30,000 hours life of their LED equivalent.
• 30 x £3.30 = £99
• So the investment difference is £329.89 – £99 = £230.89

So the payback period (assuming you’ve fixed your energy rates for the duration) is £230.89 (investment) / £118.03 (Electricity cost saving per year) = 1.96 years

At this point you should still have in the region of 18.59 years lamp life left in the performance LED lamps.

Conclusion:

Bearing in mind that you may be able to find a lesser performance LED lamp (not everyone is as fussy as I am at home about light output and colour) for less and the fact that you can feel warm and fuzzy about helping to save the planet at the same time, it would appear that changing old energy hungry light bulbs for the new generation, high output, low wattage, quick start LED equivalent is a no-brainer.

763 Lines of Quality Switches, Sockets, Clips, Lamps, Power Leads and Lighting Products to Clear At Massively Reduced Prices!

Its said too often I know, but you really will have to be quick in order to take advantage of this incredible sale.

Click wiring accessories in both plastic and metal, standard plate and flat plate, various colours – Example 2 Gang Switched Clean Earth Chrome Sockets for only £3.25! – At that price you can fit them instead of standard sockets and save at least 50%. If you use clean earth sockets, then you’ll probablybe saving in the region of 70%!

Type B domestic MCB’s from only £1.30

RCD’s from £6.47

RCBO’s £7.98

Fire Rated Downlights from £1.70

and loads more. Download the full list from here:

http://www.fastlec-pdf.com/Scolmore/Click-Surplus-Stock-July-12.xlsx

Its well worth a look – There may be some items on there you may have been going to buy anyway for current projects.

To place an order, please contact us ASAP at:

Tel. 01903 730050

email. sales@adirectresponse.co.uk

There has been some confusion over which dimmers are most suitable for dimming the Philips Master LED Dimmable range. Philips have a PDF document which gives what appears to be a comprehensive list of dimmers and their performance when used with their lamps. On closer inspection, you will probably notice that hardly any of the dimmers are available on the UK market.

I have spoken with Philips lamps technical department today (01483 293258) who tell me that they have begun testing a selection of UK readily available dimmers and will publish the results in due course. In the meantime they recomend the Danlers DQDGD range of grid dimmers that are available to fit either MK, Crabtree or Eurodata grid plates.

These Danlers dimmers rate at 400W which must be de-rated by 90% leaving a total maximum LED load of 40W (5 x 7W Philips Master LED Dimmable Lamps) per dimmer circuit. If you need more than 5 lamps per circuit then Philips recommend adding one Danlers ‘Resload’ component per 8 fittings which should enable circuits containing up to 20 lamps to be dimmed effectively.

Come on Philips, this really isn’t good enough!

Follow Up 15th June 2011

Emerging technologies such as LED  lighting don’t stand still for long, and so i wanted to just say a little something about the new Energetic 6W LED GU10 lamp being marketed by UK lighting manufacturer Click Scolmore. Said to be the largest lamp manufacturer in the world, Energetic have introduced a Dimmable 6W GU10 LED to compete with the Philips unit. The difference with this unit is that Scolmore have exhaustively tested it with most quality UK dimmers, but in particular they guarantee quality operation with their own Click range of dimmers. The figures are as follows:

250W rated Dimmer: 6 – 16   Lamps

400W rated Dimmer: 10 – 26 Lamps

We are currently marketing this lamp in the GU400 fitting ( http://goo.gl/0V4dC ) from Click Scolmore as it has a floating lamp holder that allows for the extra depth of the LED unit.

Would be really interested in any replies regarding effective dimming of either the Energetic or Philips LEDs.