Why you need LED Lights
Over the year there has a been a lot of innovation in lighting especially in LED technology and in this article we shall understand all that is needed to buy LED lights.
The 2 commonly used lighting methods are the incandescent bulb and the compact florescent bulb. As the traditional incandescent bulb has been phased out in Australia, the halogen bulb is the only available incandescent type bulb.
The fundamental reason to buy LED lights is because of incredibly efficiency by converting nearly 90% of the electricity consumed to light energy. Other traditional light sources convert only 10-15% of the electricity to light energy with the remaining electricity being lost as heat. This is because traditional bulbs have a filament. It is because of this efficiently that LED lights to not heat. As they are inherently cool, air conditioning costs can be reduced to a certain extent.
Another very important reason to buy LED lights is due to their incredible durability.
An LED bulb has an average lifespan of 50,000 hours which is more than 5 years on continuous use! A comparable luminosity halogen bulb will last only 1,500 hours tops.
Environmental concerns also should prompt a customer to buy LED lights. A florescent bulb has mercury which is very toxic. There is around 4-5mg of mercury which can poison 23000 liters of water. As these bulbs can be disposed into the environment without any control there is a large potential for poisoning of water, land or air.
A 5W LED light provides 455 lumens of light and can replace a 20W halogen light which provides only 360 lumens of light. A 100W halogen lamp can be replaced with a 25W CFL which in turn can be replaced with 16W LED lamp providing light of nearly 2000 lumens. So not only they are long lasting but energy efficient.
Another reason to buy LED lights is the reduction of the impact that their use has over the environment over conventional lighting technologies. Conventional Lighting contributes to about 6% of the total greenhouse emissions. This is around 2000 million tons of CO2 gas emissions per annum. By the use of LED lamps these emissions can be reduced by 60%.
Conventional lighting is made up of glass and is fragile. Halogen lamps can have their filament damaged with excess of vibrations. These lamps need to be handled and stored with care. LED lights on the other hand consist of metal parts and a transparent plastic enclosure. Their construction makes them quite resilient to damage by accidental dropping or vibrations.
An interesting reason to buy LED lights is for illumination by various colors. By virtue of the manufacturing process, LEDs can be any of the following colors.
- Red
- Yellow
- Orange
- Violet
- Green
- Blue
- Purple
- Ultraviolet
- Infrared
The need to buy LED lights can be seen, when we understand that LED bulbs are being manufactured in different designs. These suit a wide variety of applications and styles. They can be in the form of tubes, strips, flame tips, reflector type, dome type and diffused type.
One things that stands in the way for most folk to buy LED lights is their inherent high cost vis-à-vis the cost of conventional lighting. LED bulbs are certainly more expensive than the conventional ones. Looking at the context of cost vs lifespan, we see that while our lighting needs remain the same LED offer superior value in providing a lamp that doesn’t not need to be changed for a long time.