CFLs consume up to five time less energy than traditional incandescent and halogen bulbs. This convinced several countries including the European Union and India to increasingly use them.
Now LEDs are slowly reaching the markets. Consuming up to half the energy of CFLs they come in all shapes and colors. Even if they are still very expensive, they can last 35,000 hours and can lead to substantial savings over their lifetime.
So if further to my post on decreasing your electricity use you are switching off your incandescents, why not choosing directly LEDs ? You will find below a list of the main advantages.
According to Wikipedia:
- Efficiency: LEDs produce more light per watt than incandescent bulbs.
- Color: LEDs can emit light of an intended color without the use of color filters that traditional lighting methods require. This is more efficient and can lower initial costs.
- Size: LEDs can be very small (smaller than 2 mm2) and are easily populated onto printed circuit boards.
- On/Off time: LEDs light up very quickly. A typical red indicator LED will achieve full brightness in microseconds.[47] LEDs used in communications devices can have even faster response times.
- Cycling: LEDs are ideal for use in applications that are subject to frequent on-off cycling, unlike fluorescent lamps that burn out more quickly when cycled frequently, or HID lamps that require a long time before restarting.
- Dimming: LEDs can very easily be dimmed either by Pulse-width modulation or lowering the forward current.
- Cool light: In contrast to most light sources, LEDs radiate very little heat in the form of IR that can cause damage to sensitive objects or fabrics. Wasted energy is dispersed as heat through the base of the LED.
- Slow failure: LEDs mostly fail by dimming over time, rather than the abrupt burn-out of incandescent bulbs.
- Lifetime: LEDs can have a relatively long useful life. One report estimates 35,000 to 50,000 hours of useful life, though time to complete failure may be longer.[49] Fluorescent tubes typically are rated at about 10,000 to 15,000 hours, depending partly on the conditions of use, and incandescent light bulbs at 1,000–2,000 hours.
- Shock resistance: LEDs, being solid state components, are difficult to damage with external shock, unlike fluorescent and incandescent bulbs which are fragile.
- Focus: The solid package of the LED can be designed to focus its light. Incandescent and fluorescent sources often require an external reflector to collect light and direct it in a usable manner.
- Toxicity: LEDs do not contain mercury, unlike fluorescent lamps.
Now what is happening to lightning could occur for our multiple appliances. If governments decide to enact stricter energy efficiency standards we could save huge amounts of energy.
Japan is good example of this as Japanese people consume nearly half less energy as Americans do but their GDP per capita is similar. For further details, please check out A model of energy efficiency : Japan