2012 Washington State Energy Code (WSEC) now requires that the 75% of your lighting be what is defined as high-efficacy lamps. This is for both interior and exterior lighting. There is no separate requirements for exterior lighting.

                                                  ( Incandescent, CFL, LED )

What are high-efficacy lamps?

HIGH-EFFICACY LAMPS. Compact fluorescent lamps, T-8 or smaller diameter linear

fluorescent lamps, or lamps with a minimum efficacy of:

1. 60 lumens per watt for lamps over 40 watts;

2. 50 lumens per watt for lamps over 15 watts to 40 watts; and

3. 40 lumens per watt for lamps 15 watts or less.

Now when it comes to this requirement your two main choices are CFL and LED.

My thought on this is LED is the way to go. The are at full brightness at the flip of the switch and run cooler than the CFL’s. I have been slowly replacing my lighting with the LED’s and so far I very happy with the light they produce.

Also it has been my experience that the CFL’s just do not last as long as described by the manufacturers. One cause of this maybe that frequent cycling may degrade the CFL’s. Also Consumer Reports has found that turning CFLs on and off in less than 15 minutes period was leading to degradation of their life cycle. The life expectancy of CFL is about 6000 to 10,000 hrs per manufacturers.

LED lighting has a life expectancy of 20,000 to 50,000 hours and some high quality LED’s will function for well over 100,000 hours. At 8 hours per day this would be approximately 17 years those in the 50,000 hour range.

I expect the cost of LED’s will continue to drop as they become more common. Also some municipalities may have rebates for installing LED’s.

                                                         (Retrofit Kit)

Here is a link for Chelan County PUD for LED retrofit kits-

http://appliancerebates.chelanpud.org/2014/energy-star-led-downlight-retrofit-kits/

Here is a couple of links to comparison charts-

http://www.designrecycleinc.com/led%20comp%20chart.html

http://www.intermountain-rea.com/userfiles/LEDvsCFL.pdf

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