Then it hit me - low-voltage landscape lights are the perfect application for LEDs! I'm not talking about those solar landscape lights, which usually use LED, but traditional low-voltage lights that plug in to a timer.
And it makes sense - brightness is not as much of a concern, color temperature is not as important in many fixtures, and these are lights that run for hours, meaning a quick payback.
A google search and check on Amazon revealed very few players, though Amazon carries an LED wedge base landscape bulb from a company called LED Wholesalers.
I ordered a couple to test, and they work great. I had been using 4 watt incandescent bulbs previously (the lowest wattage I could find), so I am saving about 3.5 watts per bulb (I have three in my setup, so 10.5 watts total).
The LED "bulb" is actually a small circuit board with 6 small LEDs - two on both sides of the board, and two pointing up. This configuration provides a even distribution of light, and it is relatively warm colored (though not quite like an incandescent).
I schedule to turn off my landscape lighting for about 3 hours in the dead of night, so on average my system runs 9 hours per day over a year. Given my power cost over 500 KwH is 14.35 cents per KwH, my payback (after including shipping costs) is just under 3 years.
However, when I look around town most people are running systems with 5 or 6 fixtures, and generally use 7 or 11 watt bulbs. In a scenario like that (we'll say 5 fixtures, 11 watt bulbs), you'd save 37.5 watts, or about $17 or $18 a year, and payback would be right around a year.
Not bad for an easily overlooked power consumer!
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