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This blog contains some simple tips and advice from two regular guys. We're not accountants, financial advisors, or brokers, so follow, ignore, or discuss our ideas as you see fit.

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

The search for the frugal bulb, continued

Posted by Matt

Readers who saw my previous post about money-saving light bulbs may remember that I didn't have much luck with the LED bulb I ordered or the CFL bulbs that we received during our energy audit. I was planning on waiting out the next generation of LEDs in the hope that prices would come down and that the light quality would be closer to our incandescents.

Scratch that. New plan.

I just read about an entirely new lighting technology that is soon to be released by a company called Vu1 (read "view one"). They claim that it has all of the advantages of other types of energy efficient bulbs without the drawbacks.

Here is a table from their website that compares their ESL technology against the competition:

The table shows them (like all other new bulb technologies) to be less affordable than regular incandescents, but I think that is misleading given the longer lifespan of the new bulbs and the energy savings they will achieve. One thing that is missing from the table, but that I know some people will be happy about, is that the ESL bulbs will look a lot more like regular light bulbs. No weird squiggly shapes like with the CFLs.
If the bulbs truly live up to all of these claims, I'll eventually upgrade the whole house with them as the incandescents burn out, of course. Unfortunately, the bulbs aren't scheduled to be commercially available until the first quarter of 2009, so I guess my new plan, much like the old one, mostly involves waiting.

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