About four years ago we completed a swap of all our incandescent light bulbs to CFLs (when they burned out on their own of course) and it has been easy to maintain CFL usage since as just about everywhere carries them these days. What I do not like about CFLs is that once they burn out (it takes longer but it does happen!) I have to locate a special facility to take them due to the mercury content inside. I wanted to find a way to avoid having to do this in the future. Enter the GeoBulb LED light bulb!Not only does this bulb contain zero mercury but also zero lead. And it is extremely inexpensive to operate. To run annually: a CFL is estimated at $6.89 whereas the GeoBulb is estimated to cost only $3.97. Nice! I love saving $2.92!
And that is per bulb. In my home we have 10 bulbs this could replace; that is a savings of close to $30 per year just for swapping bulbs.
There is a warranty on these bulbs for a full three years and they are estimated to last upwards of 30,000 hours each, just over three years of usage if the bulb is on nonstop for all three years.
Now for the kind of bad news as far as a cost comparison is concerned.
The bulb itself retails for approximately $100. Now this may sound steep, and it is in the short term, but like anything innovative in the realm of energy savings, its cost benefit should be seen over time. Not only will it help reduce the draw on the energy grid but the landfill will benefit as well. At three years per bulb that is a savings of possibly 3 bulbs per lamp (based on CFL average 10,000 hour lifespan).
It is important to note that these bulbs are not to be used with dimmer switches.
After putting this bulb in my floor lamp I noted some personal preferences that made this bulb not the best choice for me. We do not use overhead lighting in our living room so I like my bulbs to be somewhat bright. As a 40 Watt equivalent this bulb was fairly dim so instead of using it in the floor lamp, I placed it in a small accent light and that made a great difference. My chief concern was the low yet audible humming sound it put out, so I will likely not use this light frequently.
Overall, the benefit of this type of bulb far outweighs the impact and as I mentioned, the minor annoyances were just personal preference so I am awarding the GeoBulb a Three Leaf Rating!
As kinks in early models are worked out and more folks come on board to this type of lighting solution I expect the cost to significantly reduce and little annoyances to be well taken care of. Thanks for being an innovative leader in energy efficient GeoBulb! ♥love♥
1 comment:
Wow, $100 is rather steep for a bulb not suitable to read by - especially for those of us with other eyes. But kudos to them for moving things in the right direction with this product, and thank you for sharing the info with us.
Peace, Judi
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