Tuesday, October 04, 2011

Low Energy LED GU10 Downlights

When the house was built we had some halogen downlights fitted  in the kitchen and a couple in the dormer bedrooms - 11 in total. Five of the 50w halogen bulbs have gone since we moved in.

I found you can get much bigger energy and cost savings with LED  Gu10 replacements - some run on only 3w or 4w - that's a 90% saving! LED bulbs are getting better and brighter all the time . They are a good bit more expensive than the standard halogen 50 Watt bulbs - but you soon get that back in electricity savings.
After a bit more research and reading reviews I  bought ten of these 4watt LED Gu10 bulbs .  I have replaced all the halogen lamps in the kitchen with these. Those Gu10 fittings can be a pain to get in - so hopefully they won't need changing again for a few years.
The light from the LED bulbs is whiter than the old halogen bulbs and  I am very pleased with them.

Instead of using 500 watts with all 10 switched on - I'll now only be using 40 watts.
I've worked out - that if they are switched on for 6 hours a day - they will use just €13 in electricity in a year- but the old halogen ones would cost €180 a year to run.  I will save €167  a year in electricity. The bulbs will pay for themselves in less than 6 months - and after that it's just savings of  €167 a year.

Someone with 30 of these in a house could reduce electricity bills by a serious amounts .
You can get some LED Gu10 bulbs for around £9.99 at  Amazon with delivery to Ireland.

If they last as long as promised I won't need to change them for at least 15 years! They don't generate any heat either - so much less of a fire risk than the halogen equivalents.

More useful sites here for Online Shopping in Ireland

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