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#46
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Re: FIRST Fundraiser: Selling LED "Lightbulbs"
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This then brings my main concern about using this as a fundraiser. If selling slightly over-priced popcorn and not doing well, how am I going to sell $25 LED's? With all the government credits out there, and I'm sure within a year or two the price will come down and they'll end up on the deal rack at Home Depot who will buy them? Maybe I'm wrong, and I very well could be, but if I was going to start using this as a fund-raiser, I would have to see another team do this and get successful results. Don't get me wrong LED's are great way to go with lighting in the future, but as a fund-raiser for FRC, I don't think it could work. My $0.02. |
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#47
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Re: FIRST Fundraiser: Selling LED "Lightbulbs"
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I can't afford spending hundreds of dollars on a new technology that has no other benefit other than potential costs savings in the future. Especially when that potential could be way off. It's just not gonna happen. |
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#48
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Re: FIRST Fundraiser: Selling LED "Lightbulbs"
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Very specifically, homeowners who may sell their homes in the next year would be perfect target consumers for these specific bulbs: they increase a home's appeal to potential home buyers. These guys would purchase the bulbs in [somewhat] "bulk" quantities in order to replace most or all bulbs within a home. While the housing market in many areas is in a slump, I'm sure there are some houses being successfully sold in most areas ... so perhaps this is an avenue teams can take. Other potential [somewhat bulk] buyers are Nursing Homes, (maybe) Apartment complexes who are looking to appeal to an energy-conscious renter, etc. Teams could get creative with what's in their area. Longer-term, these bulbs need to come down in price. The only way (at least in a way we have the power to influence, since no one knows how insane the margins are on a single bulb) to do so is to increase demand for the technology significantly. Looking around work today, I see hundreds and hundreds of 4' long fluorescent bulbs with a ~1" diameter -- the same standard bulb I see used almost everywhere (in the schools, corporate buildings, labs, etc). Maybe next year we can expand this program to sell light bulbs that fit into the same sockets our sponsors have so we may expand our fund raising efforts to them. Heh, expand our fund raising to our current sponsors ... what a conundrum. |
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#49
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Re: FIRST Fundraiser: Selling LED "Lightbulbs"
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-Brando |
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#50
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Re: FIRST Fundraiser: Selling LED "Lightbulbs"
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Let's say you have an incandescent light bulb that just died, and you're considering replacing it with LED light bulb. Not replacing the light bulb is not an option. Any potential savings in cost from an LED bulb will be placed into an investment/401k/IRA/etc portfolio, where an average rate of return of 8% (over the life of the investment, obviously not during these past few years) is not uncommon. The first step is to calculate the initial cost. The cost of a "long life" (20,000 hours life) 60W incandescent bulb is about $2, and the market price of an 7W LED bulb (40,000 hours life) is $25. Let's say a twin-pack of incandescent bulbs was purchased at the same time, so the net initial cost of an LED bulb over two incandescent bulbs required to meet the same lifespan is $21. The second step is to calculate the annual cost. In Connecticut, electricity currently costs about $0.20/kWh for residential customers! (That's what happens when you let NIMBYs block any new generating plants or transmission lines). Let's say the light bulb that died was on for eight hours a day, every day, which results in an on time of 2992 hours per year. The 60W incandescent bulb will use 179.52 kWh of electricity, while the 7W LED bulb will use 20.944 kWh. Using the price of electricity above, the incandescent bulb will cost $35.91/year while the LED will cost $4.19. Switching to LED will yield an annual savings of $31.72 in CT. Redoing these calculations with the US national average of $0.1153/kWh results in an annual savings of $18.28. The last part is to ascertain how long we will do these calculations for. At the above stated use levels, 40,000 hours / 2992 hours/year = 13.36 years. I'll round down to 13 years. So now we can plug this into time-value-of-money economics equations to determine whether or not it's worth it to invest in LED bulbs. I'll calculate this using the annual worth method, and if the final value is greater than zero, the idea is profitable relative to the status quo and should be pursued. AWConnecticut(8%) = -$21(A/P, 8%, 13 years) + ($35.91) = -$2.66 + $35.91 = $33.25 AWUS Average(8%) = -$21(A/P, 8%, 13 years) + ($18.28) = -$2.66 + $18.28 = $15.62 Thus, in both cases, the LED bulbs both result in an positive annual profit over the status quo (incandescent bulbs), and depending on what area of the country you live in and how much you use light bulbs, they may even pay for themselves in less than a year. Quote:
As for the "potential" part, that relies on the accuracy of the life-span characteristics of the new LED bulbs. Assuming the life span follows a normal distribution, a very large standard deviation in the mean life expectancy would be required to have a high sensitivity of the expected savings. Using a simple non time-value-of-money approach, the point at which a LED bulb breaks even against an incandescent is (price of LED - price of incandescent) / ((watts of incandescent - watts of LED) * price per kWh) ($25-$2) / (0.06 - 0.007) * 0.1153) = 3763.76 hours. Thus, the savings are only "potential" if the lifespan of the LED bulb is less than 3764 hours. There would have to be an INCREDIBLY HUGE standard deviation in the life span of LED bulbs to lead to a even a 1% chance of not profiting off replacing an incandescent bulb with an LED bulb. Quote:
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#51
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Re: FIRST Fundraiser: Selling LED "Lightbulbs"
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#52
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Re: FIRST Fundraiser: Selling LED "Lightbulbs"
There's a lot of energy and brain power being used in this thread.
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#53
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Re: FIRST Fundraiser: Selling LED "Lightbulbs"
Ether, if I'm not mistaken, Art was doing a simplified version, similar to what an engineering economics professor might do as an in-class exercise. He also neglected inflation. As a matter of fact, as soon as I started reading the setup, I remembered a class I was in last spring, namely, Engineering Economics. Build one transmission line or 2, based on X cost/line and Y capacity--but where are the material/transportation costs?
Does that other stuff have to be factored in? The nuclear power is (or should be) included in the national average, which was also done. Heating of the room depends on large part on both the size of the room and the number (and type) of light bulbs; for my living room at home, one light bulb normally, 2-7 at peak lighting, that is minimal heating. We get more from the people in the room. So that's not a whole lot of heating fuel saved by using incandescent. As for the light being on 8 hours a day, during the winter, it's quite possible to be up (and in one room) for quite some time, say 5-9 or 10, while it's dark, and another couple of hours in the morning, so easily about 6-7 hours. Stay up late often enough, and you could make a case for 8 hours. It also makes for decent calculations. |
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#54
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Re: FIRST Fundraiser: Selling LED "Lightbulbs"
Here's my source for the figures I chose: http://www.amazon.com/WATTS-LIGHT-FR.../dp/B000ST9AMM
Using numbers for cheaper incandescent bulbs with 1/10 the life and 1/6 the price of the one I quoted only benefits the LED replacement case. Quote:
Prices of $0.015/kWh would be great if the US got 80% of their electricity from nuclear plants like France does, but given paranoia over nuclear power plants (there has still yet to be a single confirmed death or case of cancer from Three Mile Island) and a lack of a long-term nuclear waste disposal/processing/storage facility (like Yucca Mountain proposal), we're going to be stuck with much higher average electricity prices for some time, probably until nuclear fusion research yields a commercially viable solution (last I've seen, Chinese scientists have been able to sustain a 10 million degree Celsius fusion reaction for 400 seconds, and 100 million degree Celsius reaction for 60 seconds). Quote:
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I was considering solving these equations as a function of the hours per day of operation, but then I realized that the only difference this has is to shrink or widen the time bands. The ratio of break even point relative to the entire life of the bulb remains the same. The only way the hours or operation per year would affect the break even point relative to the total life of the bulb would be if degradation of the bulb over time occured. AFAIK this doesn't happen, so that's why I chose a fixed value (eight hours per day) to simplify calculations. Quote:
However, factoring in inflation is necessary if you want to calculate the present or future value of the savings (annual payment). |
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#55
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Re: FIRST Fundraiser: Selling LED "Lightbulbs"
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Last edited by Ether : 10-12-2010 at 20:39. |
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#56
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Re: FIRST Fundraiser: Selling LED "Lightbulbs"
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So, either the "waste" heat is minimal and we shouldn't bother about it, or it's not minimal, in which case it should be factored into the equation. By the way, in the winter, I keep 7 100-watt incandescent bulbs burning in desk, table, and floor lamps situated throughout the study, and it keeps the room nice and comfortable. |
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#57
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Re: FIRST Fundraiser: Selling LED "Lightbulbs"
You can quibble over the math and assumptions all you want. Regardless of the nuances there, it is clear to me that these can indeed "pay for themselves", and I think most of us (maybe not the general population) can get past the psychology and invest now for future savings...
Having said that, I still won't buy them (for an entirely different reason). It is my belief that this technology is changing so rapidly that I am better off waiting. In a couple years, the efficiencies will be even better, and the cost will be dramatically less. To me, it's not a question of if, but rather when. Early adopters always get burned. Think of the guy that spent $5K on that 50" plasma TV. Now they are approaching $500 (10X reduction). I believe it won't be very long at all before the $20 LED bulb costs $2 (maybe even a couple years). Then I will put them all over the place while feeling sorry for the poor saps that paid $20 each. |
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#58
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Re: FIRST Fundraiser: Selling LED "Lightbulbs"
But you calculations make my point. Instead of using average costs for the country you picked a rate that's almost 4 times what I would pay, a light bulb cost way too high and a usage rate above what my hardest used light bulb would generate. Things like that make my skeptic alarm go off, big time.
That's what salespeople do, over exaggerate things to prove their point. |
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#59
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Re: FIRST Fundraiser: Selling LED "Lightbulbs"
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Either way, these calculations won't matter after 2012 when new energy efficiency standards take effect that require all standard light bulbs between 310 and 2600 lumens to be 30% more efficient than baseline incandescent bulbs, or in 2020 when even tighter standards will require all bulbs to produce at least 45 lumens per watt. While this has spurred more innovation in lighting technology in the past five years than the previous fifty, the core benefits from all improved technology have thus far been from long-term savings and benefits. It's likely that as the technology improves and production ramps up the initial prices of these improved bulbs (whether CFL, LED or high-efficiency incandescent) will approach parity with plain incandescent bulbs. |
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#60
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Re: FIRST Fundraiser: Selling LED "Lightbulbs"
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Here in Indy the rate is less than your stated average Indiana average .08794 peak .06119 mid-peak and .02948 off peak. But that doesn't change my original point of the numbers presented by advocates being worst case instead of real world and we haven't even discussed equivalent lumens yet. also when the world ends on Dec 21 2012 it won't matter anyway ![]() |
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