Test of the Ecosmart 40 Watt Equivalent LED Bulb

During the big power outage in the DC area in July 2012, I used a power inverter to run lights and a fan. It was running off a car battery; but the battery didn't last long. After the power was restored, I did some research.

I got a LED bulb at Home Depot. The inverter has a LED readout of wattage being consumed. I compared three bulbs that were all rated at 40 watts (or equavalent).

incandescent: 54 watts

CFL bulb: 168 watts

LED: 12 watts

I'm not sure why the reading for the CFL is so high. Another CFL gave readings that fluctuated a lot. and I only have two 40 watt equivalent CFL bulbs; all the others are 100 watt equivalent.

But in any case, if you want to run lights off of a power inverter, or a Duracell DPP-600HD Powerpack 600 or a lightweight generator like the Hyundai HY2000si 2200-Watt Portable Inverter Generator, LED bulbs are definitely the way to go.

I rechecked the power consumption of the CFL bulbs with a Kill-A-Watt meter. They were all using about the amount of power they were supposed to. The problem using the CFL bulbs with a power inverter is just some fluke. But all the same,  I'd use LED bulbs with any device that says "inverter". That would include small inverters you plug into your car's caigarette lighter, larger ones that have alligator clips to clip onto a car battery's terminals, or what's called an inverter generator. Small generators that produce about 2,000 watts or less are often a design called an inverter generator; I'd assume they  have this same high power consumption with CFL bulbs. That means having to refill the generators fuel tank more often.

By the way, the other problem I had during the power outage was due to running the fan on low or medium. It turns out that an electric fan uses more power on the slower speeds. It's counter intuitive, but on medium, the voltage goes through a resistor to reduce the motor speed. On low, a larger resistance is used. So during the day, it makes sense to run the fan on high. At night, because of the noise, you might want to use a slower speed.

So overall, I'm extremely inpressed with the Ecosmart bulb. I like the fact that there's no mercury in it. It feels like it's built like a tank. It's a lot heavier than I expected. It says it's got a 46 year lifespan. I know one thing: I've had to recycle an awful lot of CFLs. So much for CFL's seven year life span.

I think what is currently being sold in Home Depot is even better than mine. The ones I got look like a regular bulb, but "beam" the light up out of the top, like a car headlight. The news ones look like a flying saucer on top of the same base as the ones I got. Home Depot has a display with several LED bulbs plugged in. This newer. "flying saucer" bulb distributes light evenly. I'd look for the newer ones.

the old style bulb

You can get a 40 watt equivalent Ecosmart at Home Depot for about $10. I think now is the time to get 1 or 2 of them and start trying them out. I'm using them where lights are left on for many hours a day. If you calculate the energy use, it looks like each one could save as much as about $2.00 per year over CFL bulbs each year. And that doesn't take into consideration any savings from the AC running less because of the much cooler running bulbs.

BTW, other things that were great during the outage were a Coleman propane stove and an Energizer 3 LED Headlight. The stove boils water so fast, it almost spoiled me, and I hated to go back to the electric stove's burneers. The Energizer light is brighter than any other flashlight I've had, but is super light. It's really convenient to free up both hands when you are in the dark, either putting it around your forehead or just letting in dangle around your neck.

I haven't used them, but a set of two way radios like the Midland GXT1000VP4 50-Channel FRS/GMRS Two-Way Radios seem like a good idea. These don't rely on cell phone towers, which ran out of backup power during the bid outage. Groups like the DC Emergency Radio Network use channel 1, no privacy channel (subchannel 0), as an emergency channel.