LED Bulbs

I ordered nine LED flood lamps equivalent to 65W incandescent bulbs a week or so ago from Amazon (actually, Clearance Outlet, an Amazon merchant).  These are made by Feit Electric (never heard of them).  The reviews were quite positive, and they were very reasonably priced -- $160 including shipping.  (If that does not seem reasonable -- you have not priced LED bulbs yet.)

There were three reasons for LED lights:

1. Reduce energy consumption, both to save money, and to simplify perhaps going self-sufficient in the future.  These consume 13W of energy.  I figure that we are going to save about $22 a year by having these instead of incandescent bulbs, which will require about eight years to pay for themselves.  (What to do with the old bulbs that are still good?  We'll find a place at some point for them -- a museum?)

2. These flood lamps were to replace lights in our kitchen, which has a very high ceiling.  To give you some idea of how high, we had to roll the warehouse ladder we use for Big Bertha into the house -- a very involved process.  These are the original bulbs from when the house was built in 2005, and while we have replaced one or two of them in the last several years, the rest were beginning to fail.  If I have to bring in the rolling warehouse ladder to replace them, I don't want to do it again for a long time.  LED bulbs are supposed to be good for 25,000 hours of use.  In a kitchen that gets perhaps two hours of use a day (more in winter, less in summer), that's more than 30 years.

3. They consume less energy than the equivalent CFL bulbs, and while not instant on, like an incandescent bulb, the LED bulbs are on, and full output, in less than a second.  You can see it takes a moment for the bulb to light up, but it is really not an issue -- unlike CFLs, which can a couple of minutes to reach full intensity.

I am pleased to report that these LED flood lamps are very noticeably brighter and whiter than the 60W incandescent and equivalent CFL bulbs.  My wife kids that we can do surgery on the island in the kitchen now.  I suppose that we could have bought 11W (60W equivalent) bulbs instead, and saved a small amount of money at purchase and use, but too bright of a kitchen is seldom a problem--even if a bulb or two fails some years from now, it won't be a problem.