[Someone]

I never understood the claim that smart switches on LED lightbulbs will conserve energy. The duty cycle of the average light bulb is fairly low; I would guess they are switched on for <10% of the time, on average.

If so, adding a ‘smart switch’ that uses 0.5W to a lighting fixture that has a 10W LED light bulb increases its average power usage by about 50%. You must be fairly sloppy to make that a gain, compared to a manually operated switch.

[bcrosby95]

Lots of people have gotten lazy about turning off lights since LED is so cheap. E.g. I think our kitchen light is on around 12 hours per day because the switch isn't very convenient. Or the garage light - if it's left on during the day, it probably won't be noticed until morning.

Also kids tend not to turn lights off.

But yeah, even if you are saving money, smart switches are pretty expensive. It will take a while to recuperate the extra $ and time invested.

I would focus on switches that control several lights at once. E.g. our garage lights use 100 watts in all. Kitchen uses 65. Hallway 50.

[thatfrenchguy]

> Also kids tend not to turn lights off.

Teach your kids ? What is this laziness of saying "kids won't do X" ?

[bcrosby95]

Its called reality. Kids are people, not machines. Parenting is more comparable to pushing on a string than writing a program.

I've seen some people spend 17 years (and counting) trying to teach their kids to turn off the lights.

Much less your average 5 year old, most of which probably lack the mental awareness to always remember to turn off the light when they leave a room. Hell, my 5 year old almost ran barefoot over shattered glass because she really wanted to throw something in the trash - she forgot the glass was there about 10 seconds after we told her not to come over here while I cleaned it up.

[bsza]

One thing I noticed since installing smart bulbs all around my house is how little light I actually need most of the time. In the evenings I usually run them at 5% brightness. Don't know how that scales consumption-wise though.

[pdonis]

> adding a ‘smart switch’ that uses 0.5W to a lighting fixture that has a 10W LED light bulb increases its average power usage by about 50%

Shouldn't that be 5%, not 50%?

[dwiel]

they are assuming the 10W is only running 10% of the time and the smart switch is running all of the time. That puts the average use for the light at 1W and 0.5W for the smart switch.

[pdonis]

Ah, got it, thanks!