Grow Light Upgrades
Cost Savings Calculator

Are you trying to save money on your electric bill by switching to more efficient lights? Are you thinking of investing in LED lighting technology? Whether you are using grow lights or conventional home lighting, how soon will your light upgrade pay for itself? It all depends on your usage scenario.

LEDs can outperform all types of fluorescent lights and even high end HIDs, including double-ended HPS lights! But is it worth buying energy efficient LEDs? This simple cost calculator shows how quickly an LED light upgrade can pay itself off in electrical energy savings.

Cost Counting: Using or Switching Grow Lights

This calculator only factors in the electrical costs versus the purchase price of your lights. As you can see, the hours of operation and electrical rates are going to have a big impact on how quickly a light pays itself off through savings in electricity.

Additional Advantages

LED lighting offers more benefits than simple savings in electricity. Although electrical costs are the easiest to calculate, there are other factors to consider.

REDUCED HEAT GENERATION: In professional grow spaces, HIDs like metal halide or high-pressure sodium have been the default solutions. But switching to more efficient LED technologies can significantly reduce heat generation. That means reduced cooling and ventilation costs! This is worth serious consideration when operating in warm climates. On the other hand, what if you're running your lights in a cool room during winter months? That extra heat can reduce the amount of cycles that your furnace must run. Thus, the extra heat from your older lights is not entirely wasted energy.

IMPROVED OPERATIONAL TOLERANCE: In general, LEDs are a much better option for environments where they will be turned on and off frequently. In home and commercial environments, they can outperform fluorescents. LEDs do not require a warm up period to reach maximum brightness. Their lifespan is not diminished by short on / off cycles. They also work much better in colder environments. Do you have an unheated garage that never lights up properly in the Winter months? Replacing your linear fluorescent tubes with LEDs can yield much better light quality!

On a side note, some LEDs are being developed that are even splash or water proof. Check my review of Active Grow's LoPro Max LED as a perfect example. This makes them excellent options in grow rooms or aquariums where there is always a danger of being splashed by water.

IMPROVED LIFESPAN: You can expect more than double the lifespan out of your LEDs versus fluorescents. Most T5 bulbs will have a rated lifespan of 20,000 hours. In contrast, LEDs claim to offer 50,000+ hours of operation. These are only estimates, of course. Bulbs can fail sooner than expected. And that even applies to some LEDs that have fallen short of consumer expectations, often due to driver failure.

One more perspective on the whole lifespan issue deals with how quickly a light loses its intensity. Some bulbs may not have burned out but after enough hours of operation, their brightness will start to drop off significantly. LEDs offer a real advantage in this regard as they tend to hold their brightness for a much longer period than most other technologies. It's a broad range of factors that can really make things complicated. Thus, I personally don't try to quantify the exact lifespan savings. I prefer to focus on the reduced wattage consumption for any given coverage area.

← LED Light: Disappointments