Understanding How LED Lighting Can Save You Money
Many business owners out there may be considering the transition from traditional fluorescent lighting in your home, store, building or office to LED lighting but are concerned about the price. Will you actually save money in the long-run if you switch to an LED solution? What if something goes wrong? What if you want to make changes to your lighting scheme or design in a few years? During a panel discussing the future of LED as a viable lighting solution for the future, an analogy of the cost relationship between LED solutions and a traditional fluorescent solution was given (and published subsequently in the Quintessence), one that I think many of you may find helpful. As Karl Weinhold, Executive of KWL Lighting stated, “In order to calculate efficiency and service life you have to look at the system as a whole.”
The example is as follows:
“The corporate design color of a chain of stores is red, and the management is looking to display a wide array of different light density effects on 1.5 m2 surface area in its branches. Such a lighting effect could be realized with white fluorescent lamps and color filter transparencies. The cost would be cheaper than a variant employing red LEDs. However, the installation would need 35 watts of power, and would also lose part of its energy through the color filters.
A solution with LEDs would need just 6 watts of power to create a comparable effect, and would utilize that power in full. So in order to select the truly more cost-effective solution, it is not only a question of comparing the purchase cost, but also the savings to be gained over the years resulting from the lower power consumption of LEDs and from the lower maintenance costs incurred by virtue of their long lives. Consequently, the difference in purchase price would be very quickly amortized.”
For more about improving your home’s traditional lighting using LED technology, I invite you to read “LED Leflector Bulbs Add Style to Your Home or Office”
