cts | Volt a Day | Other Electric Things October 23, 2010

Primarily, lights.

There's a photo of my kitchen. (Out that window, across the little patch of grass is the garage where the Volt will park. The charger is out there waiting for it.)

The key elements in the photo are in the ceiling. Those are Philips Endura light bulbs. They are outrageously expensive ($86). They are LED, Light Emitting Diodes, and they are the future. They each draw a little under 15watts. They produce as much light as 75watt halogen PAR30 bulbs that they replaced. So those three bulbs are drawing just a little more than half of one of the old bulbs.

The old bulbs cost $8 each. They burned out after 2,000 hours. The LED bulbs are very robust (there's no filament) and they last for 35,000 hours. So they should be worth $140 of the old bulbs, I don't have to throw away all those burned out bulbs and I will be burning less than a quarter of the electricity. (That's 45watts of power being used to throw what looks like 225watts of light. Or light that WAS being produced by 225watts of halogen.)

There are a few things these bulbs are not good for. They cannot be dimmed. They cannot be used outdoors. I haven't researched other shapes yet, but these particular ones won't fit in any of the track heads I have around the house. So I think there are only another sixteen bulbs in the house that I could replace. (I like dimming the lights in the dining room and the bedroom.)

As much as I love new technology, I really disliked the Compact Fluorescent Lights. CFLs made everything look like a morgue to me. Does anyone like that temperature of illumination? Eskimos, maybe? Those weren't cheap either ($14), and I put four in the front hall and three in the laundry space. The only one that made any sense was the one in the garage, since it's enough light to get out of the garage and that's all you need. The other places are just washed out and sort of useless. If I can, I will see if I can find LED solutions for those spaces as well.

All of the lights on the Volt are LED, except the halogen headlights.