Getting the LED Out

Submitted by Paul Hetzler, Cornell Cooperative Extension of St. Lawrence County

It may be time to tell the CFL to get the LED out. No, the Canadian Football League doesn’t need to shape up, but there are some compelling reasons to think about switching from compact fluorescent lighting (CFL) to bulbs that use light-emitting diodes (LED).

A diode is an essential component of all electronics, ensuring electricity flows only in the direction you want it to. The batteries integral to my home’s solar-electric system would “leak” their sun-generated energy back to the solar panels at night if not for diodes. Invented near the turn of the last century, the tiny semiconductor diodes of today evolved from mammoth vacuum-tube affairs found in the guts of 1950s-era radios and TVs.

Once found mainly in calculator and clock displays, advances over the past two decades have made LEDs practical for home and workplace lighting. Two of their more appealing qualities are that they use very little electricity, and they last, well, almost forever.

When compact fluorescent lights (CFL) came into commercial production in the 1980s they were touted as more ecologically friendly than incandescent lights. Compared to incandescent bulbs, which haven’t changed much since Thomas Edison’s time, CFLs use far less energy, about one-fourth as much. And they last longer, up to 8,000 hrs. under ideal conditions (more on that later), while the old kind have a 1,200 hr. lifespan. Plus, CFLs are so darn cute, all curled up like that.

However, the CFL bulb has a dirty little secret: In its ballast, the sealed, heavy section between the curlicue bulb and the threads, is mercury, a potent neurotoxin. It’s the stuff that made the Mad Hatter go mad—many 19th century hatters were poisoned by mercury used in making those iconic black beaver-fur hats. A CFL bulb harbors between one and five milligrams of mercury. This is about 500 times the safe ingestion limit set by the US EPA, so if you were planning on eating a CFL bulb, please reconsider.

CFL bulbs are fussy, too. They don’t like to be turned on and off a lot, which drastically shortens their life. Humidly irks them as well, leading to an early demise. They’re a little slow to “wake up,” and they don’t like to work when the temperature is below zero, but I can totally sympathize with that.

It’s true LED bulbs cost more—significantly more—but they use one-tenth the electricity of an incandescent bulb of the same brightness. An average household using LED lights will produce around 450 lbs. of carbon dioxide (for lights only), whereas one with incandescent lights will create 4,500 lbs. of this greenhouse gas. LEDs contain no mercury or other known toxins, and they last a super-long time, at minimum five times longer than CFLs and fifty times longer than incandescents.

Ever break a glass light bulb? It doesn’t take much. But LEDs are nearly indestructible. Plus, they don’t care how many times they’re switched on and off in a day, and will work in extreme cold or hot environments.

Pretend for a minute you don’t care about power consumption or toxic metals. (If you don’t have to pretend, please keep that to yourself.) According to Colorado-based Intermountain Rural Electric Association, a home with 24 LED bulbs would spend, including bulb purchase, $2,160.00 on lighting (assuming $0.12 per KW-hr.) over the life of an average LED bulb. Using incandescents of equivalent size, though, would cost $11,424.00, over five times as much.

Whether you’re a tree hugger or not, the math works just the same. Using LED lighting adds up pretty nicely.