How many lightbulbs does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

Today's post is brought to you by the World Cup distracting me like crazy. Even if FIFA is corrupt and terrible, and their board room looks like something a Bond villain would install a mile underground, I always enjoy a soccer game when it's on. Of course, I'm pulling for Team USA, but since it's fun rooting for an underdog, I'd love to see Cote d'Ivoire make it out of their group; they have the lowest carbon emissions of any country in the tournament (Uruguay is close behind).

For today's project, something extremely simple. I'm going to change a couple of lightbulbs. The old-school, incandescent light bulb was popularized by Thomas Edison in 1878, and that's been the standard in homes for over 130 years. Not being one to stand on tradition, I've been using fluorescent bulbs for several years. Customers tell me all the time that they're not crazy about the "energy bulbs," because the color is weird or they take a few seconds to warm up, but they've made huge improvements in quality and price over the past few years. Combined with the facts that they use about 25% the electricity and last WAAAAAAAAAAAY longer, and CFL bulbs end up being the better choice for nearly every household application.

But I'm not just going for "better" with this experiment. I want to get as much impact as possible. So I'm trying out light emitting diode (LED) bulbs. Instead of heating a wire until it gets white-hot for incandescent, or shooting electricity through a cloud of chemicals until they glow like fluorescent, LEDs use electricity running through a microchip to make a semiconductor shoot out beams of light. Just like any new technology, they're still a bit pricey, but they last 20 times as long as old incandescent bulbs and use significantly less electricity than CFLs. The table below compares the three most common types of bulbs:

Bulb type	Watts (energy used)	Lumens (light output)	Lifespan (hours)	BTU/Hr (heat output)	Cost per year (used 6 hr/day)
Incandescent	60	760	1,000	85	$22.39
Fluorescent (CFL)	13	850	8,000	35	$4.84
Light Emitting Diode (LED)	10	800	25,000	4	$3.35

You can see the benefits clearly. CFL bulbs use less electricity, last longer, and generate less heat than the old Edison bulbs, but LEDs beat both in every category. I bought two different types of LED bulbs to try. Both are around 800 lumens, so equivalent to a 60W incandescent bulb.

Fig.1 - Cree 9W LED bulb, $4.97

Fig. 2 - Phillips 9.5W SlimStyle LED, $8.97

I hope I don't have to give anyone a tutorial on how to change a light bulb. I wanted the biggest impact, so they went in two of the lights we have on the most: one in the lamp in the living room, and one in the ceiling light in the bedroom.

Before (CFL)

After (Phillips LED)

Close-up of individual diodes. Weird, right?

If my calculations are correct, I've cut out around 272 pounds of carbon dioxide per year by changing two bulbs, and I brought down my electric bill by about $4 a month. More than makes up for the $14 I spent on them. And as an added bonus, I think these things just look cool. The journey of a thousand miles begins.