re: Remember when they told us LED bulbs would last 20 years?

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Very few things piss me off more than going to buy light bulbs and realizing/wondering (1) how cheap they used to be; (2) how overpriced they are now; and (3) how many people are making millions off the scam "science" that precludes the rest of us from just buying some cheap fricking light bulbs.

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It has already been mentioned but the savings are big on the back end. This is a post I wrote in November:

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I have had a far different experience. I replaced all the incandescent bulbs in our house with LED bulbs in September of 2017. We have a chandelier in our great room that I put 6 of these bulbs in:





The first bulb failed last month so they all lasted over 6 years.

That light stays on about 15 hours a day so the dogs have one bright room while we are at work. We travel a good bit so very conservatively that were on 275 days a year. After I looked it up on Amazon and saw they lasted 6 years I was curious how much electricity they saved. I honestly didn't care the main reason I got them was to avoid having to get the 16' ladder out at least once a year because the incandescents were going out all the time.

The 6 incandescents drew 360w compared to the 54w of the 6 60w equivalent LED bulbs. So I rounded to a savings of 300w.

15 hours of 300w savings is 4.5kWh per day x 275 days per
year x 6 years times a very conservative .10 per kWh comes out to a savings of $742.50 over those 6 years.

The pack of 8 bulbs cost me $23.00 total so $17.25 for 6. Outside all the time I would have spent changing incandescent bulbs over the 6 years I still saved over $700 over the time.

I replaced over 100 other bulbs around the house and that one is the only one that has failed. The electricity I saved just in the one fixture paid for all those bulbs more than 2 times over.

My experience is obviously very different than some, it may be the bulbs I bought or I might just be incredibly lucky but my experience has left me in a place that I would not use incandescent bulbs even if I got them for free even if someone paid for the extra electricity just based on the trouble I have saved replacing bulbs in fixtures that are in high ceilings.

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I absolutely love LED bulbs, I have several dozen incandescent ones left over and wouldn't even think about using any of them. Some people are more sensitive to the high frequency flicker but it doesn't bother me. Not dragging out the 14' step ladder and setting it up to change bulbs at least once a year is worth the price of admission to me. At least buying the quality of bulb I do and in our use case they save far more money than the extra cost and they are easily repairable but they lose a proportional amount of light output.

This is one technology that unless you are unusual and the flicker of quality bulbs bother you (cheap bulbs have cheap driver boards) I really don't see any downside unless you are using them in a manner where the heat produced is desired. For normal light bulb usage they save money and time replacing them.