The key strength of LED lighting is reduced power consumption. When designed properly, an LED circuit will approach 90% efficiency, which means 90% of the electrical energy is converted to light energy. The remaining 10% is lost as heat energy. Compare that with incandescent bulbs which operate at about 20% efficiency (80% of the electrical energy is lost as heat). In real money terms, if a 100 Watt incandescent bulb is used for 1 year, with an electrical cost of 10 cents/kilowatt hour, $88 will be spent on electricity costs. Of the $88 expense, $70 will have been used to heat the room, not light the room. If a 90% efficient LED system had been used, the electricity cost would be $11 per year – there would be a cost savings of $77 on electricity during the year. Realistically the cost savings would be higher as most incandescent light bulbs blow out within a year and require replacements whereas LED light bulbs can be used easily for a decade without burning out. LEDs produce a better quality light, last 25 times longer and consume even less energy than compact fluorescent light bulbs.

There is no comparison between the cost of LED lights vs. traditional incandescent options. With incandescent bulbs, the true cost of the bulb is the cost of replacement bulbs and the labor expense and time needed to replace them. These are significant factors, especially where there are a large number of installed bulbs. For office buildings and skyscrapers, maintenance costs to replace bulbs can be enormous. These issues can all be virtually eliminated with the LED option.Zero maintenance life means no truck rolls, scissor lifts, or personnel deployed to fix the problem using less gas and oil. It means that the operation cost of every LED, excepting energy creates no other CO2 footprint. It’s a zero-maintenance fixture, there’s lower energy consumption, and you can turn them on and off as much as you want without damaging the lamps. Eleven percent of the average American’s energy budget goes toward lighting, according to the U.S. Department of Energy, and replacing those old incandescent bulbs can reduce the energy consumption in your location by 50 to 75 percent.

Traditional light bulbs contain a filament that gets hot when exposed to electricity. The filament gets so hot that it glows bright white, illuminating the bulb. This type of lighting is extremely inefficient, as 90 percent of the energy consumed by the bulb is wasted in the form of heat. Even compact fluorescent bulbs, which improve upon this basic technology, still waste 80 percent of their energy as heat. While LEDs have been around since the mid-20th century, they weren’t designed for home lighting. It wasn’t until the early 21st century that improvements in these bulbs finally made them a viable replacement for traditional light bulbs.The operational life of current white LED lamps is 100,000 hours. This is 11 years of continuous operation, or 22 years of 50% operation. The long operational life of an led lamp is a stark contrast to the average life of an incandescent bulb, which is approximately 5000 hours. If the lighting device needs to be embedded into a very inaccessible place, using LEDs would virtually eliminate the need for routine bulb replacement.