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What year are the numbers from? I have a hard time believing that New Zealand pays 3x as much for its LEDs as the United States does. 800-lumen LEDs are alrea

What year are the numbers from? I have a hard time believing that New Zealand pays 3x as much for its LEDs as the United States does. 800-lumen LEDs are already down to $15-20 unsubsidized in the United States. Some utilities also provide a subsidy for each LED. Granted, the 10-watt LED does not save you much in power costs over the 13-watt CFL of equivalent brightness. However, the LED is already cheap enough to be a viable replacement for incandescents in bathrooms, and other areas where high cycling rates will kill CFLs.

jpollock 13y ago
Those numbers are NZD, and from less than 2 months ago. :) To convert to USD, multiply by 0.8. I just looked on the home hardware website, and they don't sell any MR16s that are more than 6.5W. The 12W bulb is a 650 lumen and sells for NZ$13. However, a CFL goes for less than NZ$4. That $9 will buy you a lot of electricity. At 3hrs/day, and NZ$0.25/kwh, that's a break even point of ~5.5 years... I think... (6W difference in power usage between CFL and LED?) Going from a 20W halogen to a 10W led would result in a payback period of 3 years. To me, these sorts of things need to pay off in their warranty period. :)