The biggest factor in how LEDs affect your bill is time. Energy Star-rated LEDs are approximately 75% more energy efficient than their incandescent counterparts. If a 60 watt incandescent uses 60 watts, while a comparable LED only uses around 10 to 15 watts, it’s signifcant. Breaking that down over something like three hours of use per day and that means using 65,700 watts per year on a single incandescent, versus roughly 16,425 watts per year on a LED (if we use the 15 watt bulb example).
With an estimated $0.52 per month cost on the incandescent and about $0.09 per month on the LED, that comes to around $6.22 a year per incandescent bulb compared to $1.04 a year per LED bulb. And remember, this is only a single bulb being used on average. When you consider a house full of bulbs, that can be quite a large amount of savings.
So basically, yes, LED bulbs will save you quite a bit on your bill overall — despite the higher upfront bulb cost. However even that may be a bit exaggerated these days as LED bulbs can often be found at comparable prices. Additionally, LEDs tend to last much longer (sometimes 30 times longer) so even if they do cost a couple dollars more you won’t have to replace them anywhere near as often.
