Go Green

Go Green With LED Lighting

LED light­ing is often over­looked in ‘green build­ing’ lit­er­a­ture while more expen­sive and less sat­is­fac­tory envi­ron­men­tal solu­tions are pur­sued. The pur­pose of this arti­cle is to dis­cuss some of the ben­e­fits of LED light­ing, and to argue that LED light­ing should be con­sid­ered an essen­tial ele­ment of any ‘green’ build­ing, house, or con­struc­tion project. Let’s start with some of the ben­e­fits of LEDs. Go green with LEDs now.

LED light­ing uses 80% less energy than incan­des­cent light­ing.

LED light­ing pro­duces 500% more light per Watt.

LED lights have lenses that focus the light into a pat­tern of equal dis­tri­b­u­tion adding to energy sav­ings as light is not wasted bounc­ing in unneeded direc­tions.

LED lights do not pro­duce as much heat. This can save on energy and main­te­nance costs.

LED lights do not emit sig­nif­i­cant UV or IR radi­a­tion. IR is back to the heat issue, and UV is some­thing we gen­er­ally try to avoid.

LED lights last 50,000 hours or about 25 times longer than incan­des­cent lights. It is possible for LEDs to go for 100,000 hours. This saves obvi­ously on main­te­nance and dis­posal.

LED lights do not con­tain mer­cury com­mon in fluorescents.

The above is meant to be a list of envi­ron­men­tal ben­e­fits. There are other aes­thetic ben­e­fits of LEDs. For one the color tem­per­a­ture can be pre­cisely con­trolled. Sec­ondly, the lenses allow for bet­ter light­ing ren­di­tion. This pretty much sum­ma­rizes most of the ben­e­fits, and there are not any envi­ron­men­tal risks posed by LEDs. Note that while other green tech­nolo­gies may have some dif­fi­cult draw­backs to over­come that the advan­tages of LED light­ing are fairly strait for­ward and clear cut.

If there was an appar­ent draw­back, at least from the con­sumer per­spec­tive, it would be the expense. An LED 12 Watt light can cost 10 times as much an incan­des­cent light. In fact, how­ever, the expense of LEDs is not a draw­back at all. Once, energy and replace­ment costs are fig­ured in the LED lights actu­ally save money. Sim­ply con­sider the cost of 24 extra replace­ments of the incan­des­cent light. Then fac­tor the extra energy use and its really not even close. Include that in the sum­mer LEDs put less load on the air con­di­tion­ing. Its clear the LED light ulti­mately saves money, but many are reluc­tant to pur­chase due to the longer term of the pay­back.

So if your con­vinced, and you want to ‘go LED’ what are some of the best prod­ucts? In fact there is a broad spec­trum of light­ing pos­si­bil­i­ties. Every­thing from street lights to recessed ceil­ing lights are avail­able all at costs that pay­back before too long. You should also con­sider the source of your LEDs. The best LEDs (in this authors opin­ion) are pro­duced by Clean Light Green Light. CLGL is a US com­pany. The LED fix­tures may be made by any man­u­fac­turer but try to ver­ify the source of the LEDs.

Finally, the real ben­e­fit of LEDs is that they are cool. They are not hot like incan­des­cent lights, they are cool. When you see the lights and what they do it is impres­sive. Con­sid­er­ing how impor­tant light­ing is LEDs rep­re­sent the best solu­tion and they are avail­able today. It is cool to go green.

Go green with LED lighting, a wise decision and a money saver.