LED lights
While we’re on the topic of gradual investments in products that make a big difference to power usage and power bills and carbon emissions have you started using LED lights in your home?
These lights are another investment that you can do gradually one light at a time. When you buy them the price you pay will depend on how many little LEDs are in the bulb and the more there are the more it will cost as far as I can work out.
But once you have bought the bulb that is the biggest part of the cost done with. They last and last and they use very little power.
They come in 240volts and 12volts. We’ve bought some 240volts LEDs but gradually we are also buying 12volt LEDs because John is starting to put in parallel wiring in our home for a 12volt system that will run off our solar panel (not the photovoltaics). This is like a back-up system but it will also be available instead of the lights that are used most. And we can put some press-button LEDs in spots that are very hard to wire to like over the mirror.
Each LED bulb becomes a precious investment in itself. We bought a powerful 12volt LED bulb for a camping light and took it away with us recently. It worked brilliantly. We took a battery with us but no solar panel. It draws so little power that even providing a bright light to read and cook by for 10 days didn’t need us to generate input power.
So LED lights are an investment in reducing your energy use and becoming very sustainable. It is easy to collect enough power to drive an LED light bulb from a solar panel.
Let us know if you have a go at it.