By Greg Spaanderman, Managing Director/ Founder at Direct Lighting
Is your home still fitted with energy sucking halogen downlights? If they are, it might be time to replace them with the more efficient Light Emitting Diodes (LED) globes and reduce the energy consumption of your downlights by 70 to 80 percent.Over the years, many homes were fitted with halogen downlights. These were great at the time but now that we have modern LEDs, this is a good time to replace them with this more efficient form of lighting. This will save buckets of energy and therefore money. Also, LEDs are a much safer option because they do not get as hot as halogen lamps.
In some cases, like with MR16 LEDs, there can be a direct replacement for low voltage halogen downlight fittings, without needing any wiring changes - but you will need to check the compatibility with your downlight transformers.
Some of the benefits of using LEDs are:
- Replacing a 50 Watt halogen lamp with a 10 Watt LED can reduce the amount of energy consumed by as much as 80 per cent.
- LEDs generate much less heat and reduce the fire risk associated with halogens.
- They last between 20,000 and 40,000 hours.
- A good quality lamp will cost between $20 and $30.
- The payback period is between one and three years.
Another alternative to replacing your globes is to replace the entire fitting. We believe that this is a better alternative.
This is quite a simple thing to do if your downlights were fitted with power points in the ceiling when they were installed. If that is the case it is a simple matter to pull out the plug and plug in the new LED downlight. A complete downlight can cost as little as $25 and they come with a 3 pin plug. The standard cut out was 90mm and this is the size of the new fittings as well. The fittings are just held in with springs so each downlight should take about 5 minutes to change over.