Add one row per fixture group. Group by wattage if you have different sizes. Use the load example for a quick start.
Savings by Fixture Group
| Group | Old kWh/yr | LED kWh/yr | Saving | Annual $ | Bulb Cost | Payback |
|---|
Full Analysis
| Parameter | Old Lighting | LED Lighting | Improvement |
|---|
LED Bulb Equivalent Wattage Reference
| Lumen Output | Incandescent | Halogen | CFL | LED | Annual Saving per Bulb* |
|---|
*Annual saving per bulb vs incandescent at 1,000 hrs/yr, $0.13/kWh.
How to Use the LED Lighting Savings Calculator
Select your province for the default electricity rate ($0.07-0.09/kWh in Quebec vs $0.17-0.19/kWh in Nova Scotia and Alberta). The same LED upgrade saves twice as much money in Nova Scotia as in Quebec despite identical kWh savings. Adjust the rate to match your actual bill if it differs.
One row per group of identical fixtures in the same location. Enter old bulb wattage, LED wattage, fixture count, and daily operating hours. LED wattage auto-fills from the standard equivalent; adjust for your specific bulb. T8 fluorescent: use 17-18W LED tube for a 32W T8; T12: use 17W LED for a 40W T12.
A standard LED bulb runs $3 to $5 for an A19 shape, up to $8 to $15 for specialty shapes. At typical Canadian rates, savings of $6 to $10 a bulb per year against a $4 to $8 bulb cost give a 6 to 18 month payback. Rated life for household LEDs commonly runs 15,000 to 25,000 hours, with some premium models rated higher; standard bulbs no longer carry an ENERGY STAR label to confirm this against, so check the manufacturer's stated rating.
In air-conditioned buildings, every watt of reduced lighting cuts cooling demand by roughly 1.0-1.3 watts (depending on AC efficiency). Enable for commercial buildings with significant AC use. For Canadian homes with modest cooling loads, this adds 5-15% to total summer savings, smaller but real.
LED Lighting in Canada: The Fastest Payback Energy Upgrade
Among energy efficiency upgrades available to Canadian homeowners and businesses, LED lighting tends to deliver one of the fastest paybacks, often under a year for residential use. The efficiency gap between LED and incandescent lighting is large: a 9W LED produces the same 800 lumens as a 60W incandescent, using about 85% less electricity for the same light. NRCan's list of certified lighting products is a starting point for checking which fixtures and light strings still carry an efficiency label, even though the label no longer applies to ordinary bulbs.
The Numbers Behind LED Savings
Consider a home with 30 fixtures, averaging 60W incandescent bulbs used 3 hours a day. Annual consumption works out to 30 × 0.060 kW × 3 hrs/day × 365 days, or 1,971 kWh a year. At Ontario's $0.13/kWh, that is about $256 a year. Nine-watt LED equivalents use 296 kWh a year, or about $38, a saving of $218 a year. At $6 a bulb, the $180 LED cost pays back in about 10 months.
In higher-rate provinces such as Nova Scotia or Alberta, at roughly $0.18/kWh, the same upgrade saves around $300 a year and pays back in about 7 months. In Quebec, at roughly $0.08/kWh, the saving drops to around $134 a year and payback stretches to about 16 months, still a strong return for the cost of a bulb.
Commercial LED Lighting: Even Faster Returns
Commercial buildings typically have higher lighting loads and longer operating hours than residences, which tends to give LED upgrades a faster payback in dollar terms even when the payback period in years looks similar. A retail store with 100 T8 fluorescent fixtures at 32W each, running 12 hours a day, uses about 14,016 kWh a year, or roughly $1,822 at $0.13/kWh. Replacing them with 18W LED tubes cuts that to about 7,884 kWh, saving around 6,132 kWh and $797 a year. At $20 a fixture for LED retrofit kits, the $2,000 cost pays back in about 2.5 years on the energy saving alone, before counting the maintenance saved from fewer lamp and ballast replacements over a fluorescent tube's shorter life. For denser lighting layouts, checking the lighting power density calculator against your local code helps confirm a retrofit design meets the applicable watts-per-square-foot limit.
LED Lighting and HVAC: The Cooling Connection
One often-overlooked benefit of LED lighting is its effect on cooling loads. It is sometimes said that incandescent bulbs turn 90% of their energy into heat, but for cooling-load purposes the more accurate figure is closer to 100%: ASHRAE treats the full wattage of a light fixture as sensible heat gain to the space, since the visible light itself is eventually absorbed by walls, floors, and furnishings and becomes heat too. In an air-conditioned space, every watt of old lighting removed cuts the cooling load by roughly that same wattage, divided by the AC system's coefficient of performance, which this calculator estimates as SEER divided by 3.412. For a commercial building replacing 100 T8 fixtures (a 1.4 kW reduction) with a SEER 16 system running through a 2,920-hour cooling season, that works out to roughly $113 a year on top of the direct electricity savings, a real but secondary effect next to the lighting saving itself. The lighting heat gain calculator works out the same relationship in more detail for a full cooling load estimate.
The interaction with heating in winter runs the other way: less heat from lighting means slightly more heating load in colder months. Since heating fuels are typically cheaper per kWh of heat delivered than the electricity cost of the lighting it replaced, the net annual effect of switching to LED is still positive.
ENERGY STAR LED Standards in Canada
Standard LED light bulbs are no longer an ENERGY STAR certified category in Canada. NRCan retired ENERGY STAR certification and labelling for light bulbs, judging that LED efficiency gains in ordinary lamps had become the market standard rather than something worth singling out; products already carrying the logo may still appear on shelves as retailers sell through existing stock. ENERGY STAR certification is still active for other lighting categories, including LED downlights and fixtures, and decorative light strings. Federal Canada Greener Homes rebates never covered LED lighting on its own, and that program is now closed to new applicants regardless. The energy audit calculator still includes lighting as one of the upgrade categories it assesses, even without a certification label to point to.
Frequently Asked Questions
Replacing 30 incandescent bulbs (60W) with LED equivalents (9W), used 3 hours a day, saves about 1,675 kWh a year. At Ontario rates ($0.13/kWh), that is about $218 a year. At Nova Scotia or Alberta rates (roughly $0.18/kWh), it is closer to $300 a year. In Quebec, at roughly $0.08/kWh, savings are around $134 a year, still worthwhile given how little the bulbs cost. Homes still using halogen save less per bulb, since halogen is already somewhat more efficient than plain incandescent, while T8 fluorescent tubes replaced with LED save roughly 40 to 45% of the original lighting energy.
A standard LED bulb costs $3 to $10 and typically saves $4 to $10 a year in electricity, depending on usage hours and your electricity rate. At typical values, a $6 bulb saving around $7 a year pays back in under a year. Even in Quebec, where electricity is cheaper, a $6 LED saving around $4 a year pays back in about 18 months. LEDs also cut down on replacements: a 25,000-hour LED lasts about 23 years at 3 hours a day, compared to roughly a year for a 1,000-hour incandescent. Note that standard LED bulbs are no longer an ENERGY STAR certified category in Canada, so a specific efficacy or lifetime claim is worth checking against the manufacturer's own spec sheet rather than a certification label.
Yes, LED upgrades pay back in every Canadian province, though the number of months varies with the local rate. In higher-rate provinces such as Nova Scotia or Alberta, a bulb typically pays back in 6 to 8 months. In Ontario and BC, it is closer to 8 to 12 months. In Quebec and Manitoba, where electricity is cheaper, payback stretches to 12 to 18 months, still a strong return for the cost of a bulb. Commercial buildings running fixtures 10 to 16 hours a day see faster paybacks in dollar terms in every province, since the same wattage reduction is multiplied over more hours of use each year, though the payback period in years for a given fixture and rate stays broadly similar to the residential case.
Yes, though the effect is secondary to the direct electricity saving. In an air-conditioned space, essentially all of an old bulb's wattage ends up as heat that the AC system has to remove, so switching to LED cuts that cooling load too. In offices or retail stores with meaningful AC use, this calculator typically adds a modest amount on top of the direct lighting saving; the exact figure depends on the cooling season length and the AC system's efficiency. In heated spaces during winter, less heat from the lights means slightly more heating demand, but since heating is usually cheaper per kWh than the electricity the old lighting was using, the net effect across the year is still positive.
Related HVAC & Energy Tools
Full home energy assessment
Total home energy cost
ENERGY STAR appliance savings
ROI on any upgrade
CO2e from all energy use
AC efficiency & cooling cost
Payback on insulation upgrades
VFD energy savings