LED Bulbs, LED Tubes, A Look at LED Savings Proves to be Illuminating for Your Business or Property

As a general rule the actual energy cost of lighting, using an LED bulb vs. an incandescent bulb producing the same light, is 85 to 90% less with the LED bulbs. If your business uses, for example, 1,000 60-watt bulbs 11 hours a day 365 days a year assuming a $0.14 per kWh cost, a single incandescent bulb would cost $33.63 per year to keep lit, excluding the cost of labor to change it every 1000 hours of use. An LED 7 watt bulb would offer comparable lighting for about $3.93 for the year. Thus, 1000 incandescent bulbs would cost $33,630.00 in just electricity in a year vs. only $3,930 for LED bulbs. Comparable savings would occur with LED Tubes, LED street lights, LED Floods, basically any kind of LED Lights.

The above figures show that, excluding the cost of the bulbs and the labor to change them, a company running 1000 incandescent bulbs currently, as described above, could save a whopping $29,700 in electricity per year by switching completely to LED all at once. During the course of a year in the example above, each incandescent bulb will be used 4,015 hours and thus must be changed four times. Some bulbs are harder to change than others but on average it seems safe to set a time frame of 10 minutes by the time an employee gets a bulb and a ladder if necessary and makes the lighting change. So changing a bulb four times a year would cost plus or minus 40 minutes in employee time or two thirds of one man hour or $8 if you are paying $12 an hour or $12 paying $18.

A decent 1000 hour incandescent bulb can be purchased for about $1, much less than an LED bulb. Using 4 bulbs a year will then be only $4. So your full cost per lighting fixture socket per year for 4 incandescent bulbs, plus electricity, plus changing them out, would be about $33.63 for electricity, $8 for labor, and $4 cost of bulbs, or $45.63. Your cost for two years would be over $90; for three years around $135 without adjusting for increases in the cost of electricity.

Changing out 1,000 incandescent bulbs all at once to LED bulbs will cost roughly $50,000. Ouch! But, you get back most of that the first year in energy savings from your electric bil! By the end of year two you have saved almost $60,000 in electricity alone. Maintenance costs are down plus or minus $10,000 depending on what you pay per hour, you buy no bulbs year two, which is another $4,000 you save. Your maintenance people have taken hundreds of fewer trips up and down ladders, you are reducing your carbon footprint significantly, you are a part of the solution. By year three there is nothing but an ongoing $45,630 minus $3,930 or $41,700 in savings every year other than the additional savings you now enjoy every time your electricity costs go up, which in year three might well exceed what you are now spending per year on total lighting costs!

If you run shifts or for any reason must operate with "lights on" 24/7, your ROI on adding LED Bulbs is a "no brainer" year one. By year two your savings could easily exceed $100k in the above scenario. Plug your stats into our handy, dandy savings calculator and see the kind of savings you can enjoy now, and then give us a call.

Standard LED: 5727 Topanga Canyon Blvd. #5 Woodland Hills, CA 91367
Sales@standard-led.com