Why LED lights use less power than traditional lights

With energy rates climbing, you should know LED lights use so much less power than most traditional lighting technologies for a number of reasons.

First, they are very efficient at converting electrical power to light, but even more significant, luminaries using them do not have to output as many lumens of light to get the same or nearly the same effective lighting.

Any traditional light bulb or source radiates its light in all directions; it is a point source of light. Much of the light is wasted, because it radiates in directions away from the target area. Inside luminaries, reflectors are used to redirect light shining away from the target, but even the best of these reflectors are very inefficient.

In a typical fixture or wall pack light, about 40 percent of all the light generated never makes it out of the fixture housing. It is absorbed inside and wasted as heat.

With LEDs, output light is one direction. This means the light is radiated in the direction of the target area. No reflectors are necessary, eliminating reflector waste.

Another reason is that traditional light sources, including metal halide, sodium, mercury vapor or florescent, tend to lose efficiency very quickly once they are in use. After only a few hundred hours of use, their light output starts dropping substantially, even though their power use remains the same.

While LEDs can also diminish output over their rated lifetime, it is a much smaller percentage and is spread over a much longer time.

The light color of LEDs is also much better, resulting in more effective lighting than other lighting technologies. This is being proven over and over in every study that has been done where LEDs have replaced sodium units. Even in some cases where LEDS had less lumen output, effective lighting is much better.

This, together with better voltage conversion efficiency, very long lifetime and no maintenance, show LEDs today as the clear winner over all other lighting technologies.

So we should prefer to use led light to light our home.

HARSHVARDHAN SINGH.