While I generally applaud folks conserving energy, you have to take a serious look at cost-savings. While 8, 40 watt lamps in a dining room chandelier may seem like a lot, if it's never on, you're not using any energy. If it's rarely on but dimmed down 50%, it still doesn't use much energy. But calculate the cost of LED replacement vs the true cost of using the incandescent and you may find it's a 10 or 15 year payback to convert.
True, although in our case we use this light for several hours a day.
Although we have in fact replaced EVERY single bulb/fixture in and outside the house even ones we rarely ever use, in our case mostly because we are selling our house soon and want to be able to say the entire house is 100% LED with 20++ year bulbs as a selling point.
I think we have spent around $350 to replace every bulb in the house including taking down old ugly fixtures and replacing with nice LED CAN lights that are 100X better looking and functioning so in most cases not just the economical factor but also way better appearance, plus the selling point of having 100% LED was well worth the $350.
We have had most of these in place for about 3 years now and even if we only save on average $3 a month that would still be $108 taken off the $350 already PLUS never having to change a bulb would also start to add up.
One other advantage for us at least is that we live in a Townhome that is nestled into and surrounded by large trees, even though we are in an end unit so only ONE wall is joining we still have very little natural light coming in during the DAY, especially upstairs. So we keep the lights on pretty much 100% of the time in a couple parts of the house and just adjust the dimmer instead of flipping the on/off switch, it is also very nice at night to have most of the house very dimly lit so we can walk down to the Kitchen in a nice warm glow that is just enough to see everything, plus taking the dog out to pee at 12 Midnight every night everything is lit plus the outdoor front porch light is a dawn to dusk automatic LED and we have Solar powered dawn to dusk lights lighting the whole pathway.
I just did a quick calculation of just our porch light which is easy to calculate because it burns on average 10 hours a night 12 months out of the year and at full brightness not dimmed.
It used to be a 60W incandescent, it is now a 60+W LED, actually seems quite a bit brighter than the old porch light.
60W/1000KW=0.06 KWH used per hour X 0.11 cents per KWh x 300 hours per month is about $1.98 per month to burn that one old 60W incandescent.
now its 10W/1000KW = 0.01KWh used per hour X 0.11 cents pr KWh x 300 hours is 0.33 cents per month for the new LED porch light that is brighter.
Cost savings of just that ONE light is $1.65 month or $20 a year. The whole fixture was $29 at Costco so will completely pay for itself in 18 months PLUS will burn for at least the next 20 years, on average I think I replaced that 60W bulb about every 2 years or so probably save the cost of at least 8 bulbs to boot.
I believe we have 37 lights in the house, a few rarely burn, some 1-5 hours a day and at least 5 burn pretty much 24/7 though dimmed most of that time.
Then of course in the summer the ZERO heat output that needs to be taken out with the AC, wouldn't even know how to guess that in AC savings.
If I had to guess I would have to say that we probably average about a $10 per month savings total from the LED or $120 a year.
We have already saved as much as we spent on them if that guess is even close.