LED's

Now for many years we have used LED replacement bulbs for all of the lighting on the boat, the saving in power consumption just makes this a no brainer. Why would you not reduce your consumption so vastly for so little outlay.

However the prohibitive cost of LED bulbs for the home has been something of a factor in us not embracing the technology on land as well as on water.

However in recent times this has all changed. Technology has moved on and as with most things as the technology progresses the cost decreases and becomes available to more and more people. 

Modern living has somewhat changed how our homes are illuminated, and the spot light is becoming more and more fashionable in the home. But with the average 50 watt halogen spotlight consuming on average around about £20 worth of electricity per year assuming it is on for 4 hours per day on average it can become an expensive job keeping them lit. For example in our kitchen alone we have four of them and have recently installed another four in the hallway. A total of 400 watts of halogen bulbs eating away at approximately £160 worth of electricity a year if we let them.

So it was again a no brainer, now that we have installed more halogen lights we needed to change the bulbs to LED equivalent GU16 bulbs to cut that consumption down, if the figures are to be believed the new LED bulbs will use approximately a tenth of the electricity that the halogen bulbs did. Savings which should really start to stack up over the years. 

Now for the cost. Well as I said earlier the cost has come down significantly over recent years and if you shop around there are some great deals to be had. I bought a box of 10 LED GU16 bulbs for the princely sum of £12.75. As I said, a no brainer and if the life span is to be believed these bulbs could last 50,000 hours, yes that's right 50,000! That is almost 25 years of use!