s 100 watt bulb federal ban looms - Switch was among a handful that unveiled prototypes of a 100-watt-equivalent LED bulb, which is considered a kind of tipping point for LEDs—if someone can make an LED bulb that looks as great as a 100-watt incandescent, the LED bulb will have finally arrived. That seems increasingly likely. Switch will release its 60- and 75-watt equivalent bulbs to retailers in October, and its 100-watt-equivalent bulb will go on sale in December. There's a small hitch, though: At the moment, only the 60- and 75-watt alternatives are available in "warm white," the yellowish color that we associate with incandescents; the 100-watt-equivalent bulb will put out "neutral white," a bluer color that more closely resembles the light from CFL bulbs. Switch will release a warm 100-watt-equivalent bulb sometime next year, Sharenow says.
Switch's 60-watt-replacement bulb will sell for about $20, and the 75-watt and 100-watt replacements will cost slightly more. This will be cheaper than other LED bulbs—Philips* sells a 60-watt replacement LED bulb that goes for about $45, for instance. But $20 for a light bulb still sounds expensive. Incandescent bulbs sell for about 50 cents to $1 per bulb, and CFL bulbs have been approaching that same low price. LED bulbs seem to break the bank by comparison...he estimates that a year from now, Switch's 60-watt-equivalent bulb will sell for under $15, and could hit $10 the year after that. At that price, Switch's new bulbs will be much harder to resist.
But that's only until you do the math. On average, an incandescent bulb lasts about 1,000 hours—that's about a year, if you keep it on for about three hours a day. Electricity in America also costs about 11 cents per kilowatt hour (that's the average; it varies widely by region). In other words, a 50-cent, 60-watt incandescent bulb will use about $6.60 in electricity every year. Switch's 60-watt-equivalent LED, meanwhile, uses only 13 watts of power, so it will cost only $1.43 per year. The Switch bulb also has an average lifespan of 20,000 hours—20 years. If you count the price of replacing the incandescent bulb every year, the $20 Switch bulb will have saved you money by its fourth year. Over 20 years, you'll have spent a total of about $142 for the incandescent bulbs (for electricity and replacement bulbs) and less than $50 for Switch's 60-watt bulb. (I made a spreadsheet showing my calculations.) - SLATE
Haase - I have had success with $10 LED's (pictured right)