Guest Blog – Switch on: Make the move to LED lighting

About our guest blogger: Michael Downie is the General Manager of Philips Lighting Australia and New Zealand.

We can’t survive in modern society without electric lighting. It’s absolutely everywhere we go – in our homes, places of work, the cars we drive and the streets we live on. Lighting is so ubiquitous that most of us don’t even notice it – until it’s not there.

So it may surprise you to learn that lighting consumes nearly 20 percent of all electricity in the world and almost one third of New South Wales and Victoria’s electricity is used in the home, with between seven and nine percent used for lighting.

As such, there has been a big focus on finding alternatives to the humble light globe. After all, we can’t live without light, so we have to find ways to live better with light.

A technology innovation, which has recently made a big step forward for consumers, is LED (Light Emitting Diode). As energy consumption is directly proportional to a globe’s wattage, LEDs use as little as 4 watts, while incandescent globes commonly used around the home typically use between 40 and 100 watts.

The biggest benefit of LED light is that it uses less than 80 percent of the energy used in traditional light bulbs. Using an LED bulb all day is the equivalent of turning an incandescent light globe off for 19 hours of the day. With an average Australian household having 50 light points, that is a significant reduction in energy.

Another plus for LED is that it lasts an extremely long time, much longer than a traditional incandescent globe. Current LED lamps on the market last from 15,000 to 25,000 hours. So not only are you saving on energy bills, but your replacement costs are significantly reduced over the lifetime of the bulb.

Finally, it is very easy to use LED bulbs in any home, as they can be used in existing light sockets. You don’t need to install any special light fittings; just take out your old light bulb and put in the new one – good LED bulbs should come in both bayonet and Edison screw bases, just like traditional light globes do.

The good news for Australian households is that LED lighting is becoming increasingly affordable and more widely available, such as your supermarket. Making the switch to LED is not only good for your energy bill, its good for the environment and as easy as changing a light bulb.

Other ways to reduce energy in your home through lighting

• If you are building or renovating, avoid having to use artificial lighting during the day by installing energy efficient windows and skylights to optimise the use of natural daylight. You don’t need to install huge skylights in order to get the benefits of natural daylight inside
• Use motion sensors on outdoor lights, and set the ‘on’ time to as little as you need
• Use ‘task’ lights, which are efficient table or floor lamps for specific tasks, rather than lighting the whole room to a high level
• Use multiple and two-way light switches where you can, rather than one switch for all the lights in one room. If a room has more than one entrance, install switches at each entrance to make it easier to turn off the lights when leaving the room.