How Long Does It Take LED Lights To Pay For Themselves?

LED lights generally pay for themselves through electricity bill savings in less than a year, with higher brightness replacements paying for themselves even faster.

In this article I going to show you exactly how LED lights pay for themselves and convince you that it’s actually worth going out and buying new LED lights today vs waiting another year.

How Much Do Regular (Incandescent) Light Bulbs Cost To Run

Working out how much light bulbs cost to run is actually pretty simple once you know how to do it.

Electricity costs the same whether you are using incandescent bulbs or LED lights. Electricity companies generally charge you per kWh of electricity used.

A kWh (kilo Watt hour) is using 1,000 watts of energy for 1 hour. This could be a 1 Watt bulb for 1,000 hours or a 1,000 Watt bulb (I don’t know if these even exist) for just 1 hour.

Incandescent bulbs usually come in the following brightnesses based off their Wattage.

40W, 60W, 90W/100W

Costs for electricity in the US vary considerably. From as much as 29.39c in Hawaii to as little as 9.27c in Washington (according to the EIA).

To make things easy I’ll just be looking at the US average of 12.82c/kWh. If your electricity costs less the LED lights will take longer to pay themselves off, if your electricity costs more then they will pay themselves off even faster.

How To Work Out How Quickly LED Lights Will Pay For Themselves

LED lights pay for themselves in electrical savings (aka. Electricity you didn’t use that you would have otherwise). So first we need to work out how much they will save us.

LED lights have equivalents to regular lights which makes our job easier.

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Regular Globe (W)	Equiv. LED Globe (W)	Savings
40W	7W	33W
60W	9W	51W
100W	13W	87W

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[insert table here]

Next we need to look at how much new LED lights cost and how much we save per hour of usage.

This will tell us how many hours of usage it will take for the LED lights to save us more in electricity costs than what we actually paid for them.

For your convenience I’ll provide direct links to buy the LED lights on Amazon (affiliate links…thanks).

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LED Globes	Globe Cost	Hours To Pay Off Globe	Days To Pay Off If Used 4 Hours/Day	Days To Pay Off If Used 8 Hours/Day	Days To Pay Off If Used 24 Hours/Day
7W (40W Equiv.)	$4.49 Buy on Amazon	1,061	265	133	44
9W (60W Equiv.)	$5.99 Buy on Amazon	916	229	115	38
13W (100W Equiv.)	$5.99 Buy on Amazon	537	134	67	22

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Most households will use their lights for roughly 4 hours/day with some using them more and some using them less.

For us our kitchen lights get much more than 4 hours/day while our outdoor lights see very little usage. But overall I think this is a good figure to use.

As you can see all the globes paid for themselves in less than a year.

7W paid for itself in less than 9 months

9W paid for itself in less than 8 months and the

13W paid for itself in less than 5 months

This means buying LED globes is likely going to give you a much better return than the stock market. Earning over 100% of their cost (in savings) each year.

If you have a light that is going to be on 100% of the time for some reason then an LED will pay for itself sometimes in under 1 month! This is incredible.

Only problem is there is a limit to how much you can save because there is a limit to how many lights you have in your house.

What About Cheaper/More Expensive Electricity?

The time it takes for an LED to pay for itself changes based on what you pay for electricity. The above examples used the US average of $0.1282/kWh.

However depending on your area electricity may be cheaper or more expensive.

Let’s take the time to look at the cheapest rate of electricity in the country as well as the most expensive.

CHEAPEST: Washington – $0.0927/kWh

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LED Globes	Globe Cost	Hours To Pay Off Globe	Days To Pay Off If Used 4 Hours/Day
7W (40W Equiv.)	$4.49 Buy on Amazon	1,468	367
9W (60W Equiv.)	$5.99 Buy on Amazon	1,267	317
13W (100W Equiv.)	$5.99 Buy on Amazon	743	186

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MOST EXPENSIVE: Hawaii – $0.2939/kWh

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LED Globes	Globe Cost	Hours To Pay Off Globe	Days To Pay Off If Used 4 Hours/Day
7W (40W Equiv.)	$4.49 Buy on Amazon	463	116
9W (60W Equiv.)	$5.99 Buy on Amazon	400	100
13W (100W Equiv.)	$5.99 Buy on Amazon	234	59

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As you can see:

The cheaper your electricity the long it takes LED lights to pay for themselves. The more expensive your electricity the faster they pay for themselves.

Even with the cheapest electricity in the country Washington residents would still cover the cost of their new LED lights in less than a year (with the exception of the 7W globe which paid for itself in 1 year 2 days).

How Much CO2 Emissions Can You Save?

Saving CO2 emissions is really important to me.

I have previously looked at CO2 emissions per kWh of electricity and found that each kWh of electricity creates 0.94 kg or 2.07 lbs of CO2.

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LED Globes	CO2 Saved Per Hour	Carbon Saved Per Year If Used 4 Hours Per Day	Carbon Saved Per Year If Used 24 Hours Per Day
7W (40W Equiv.)	0.031 kg or 0.068 lbs	45.29 kg or 99.73 lbs	271.74 kg or 598.40 lbs
9W (60W Equiv.)	0.048 kg or 0.106 lbs	69.99 kg or 154.13 lbs	419.95 kg or 924.79 lbs
13W (100W Equiv.)	0.082 kg or 0.180 lbs	119.40 kg or 262.93 lbs	716.39 kg or 1,577.59 lbs

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As you can see a single LED light globe used at an expected rate of 4 hours per day can save 45-119 kg (99-262 lbs) of CO2 being emitted into the atmosphere each year.

Most people have way more than 1 light in their house so the effects compound.

I personally have 14 lights in my house and will be saving over half a tonne of CO2 emissions per year because of my change to LED lights.

It saves you money and it saves the environment. I implore you to stop waiting and instead take action now to replace your old lights with the more energy efficient LED lights.