kinda, but you're also not buying a mini space heater.
Average lifespan of an incandescent bulb is about 1,000 hours. For a typical 60 watt bulb, that means it burns 60 kWh in electricity over the course of it's life. At $0.20/kWh, that means an incandescent is going to cost you $12 in electricity over its lifetime.
A Philips Ulta-Definition 4-pack of 60W-equivalent is $11.53 on amazon today, or $2.88 / bulb. That $3 bulb is actually 8W. So over those same 1,000 hours, that's 8 kWh, or $1.6 in electricity costs. So the $3 bulb saves you $10 in lifetime electricity costs vs. one incandescent.
But those bulbs are rated for 15,000 hours. Lets assume they all lie and deflate that by 1/3 (maybe a power surge will hit a few years in). That single $3 bulb still saves you 10 x $10 = $100 in electricity costs vs incandescents over its useful life. A bit more if you pay California electricity rates, a bit less if you live near some hydro co-op. But the difference is large enough that the effect is true no matter where you are.
So yeah, top-range lamps give better results than the cheapo stuff, but top range isn't that much more expensive, and the lifetime savings of going to LED are hard to ignore -- op-ex vs. cap-ex if you will.
Personally, I'd pay a lot more in electricity costs to have light that has full spectrum output. The Waveform lights I bought are about $40/bulb, and they're nicer than the Philips I tried, but they're still not as nice as a regular full spectrum incandescent.
But I also live in a small NYC apartment, so I don't have your typical suburban house with 20+ light fixtures to deal with, I only have 6.
You're suggesting that LED light bulbs need replacing every year, which hasn't been my experience (like, at all). I switched over to LED bulbs 10 or so years ago and haven't had to replace a single one yet.
I’ve got outdoor LED lights that fail constantly. So often that I keep dozens of them in storage to replace them as they die. Much less reliable than the incandescents they replaced. I’m fact, I have a string of about 50 sockets, about half are still incandescents that have survived for 10+ years, and the other half are LEDs that I have to keep replacing. Sadly, whenever an incandescent light goes, I have to replace it with the crappy LED version, so eventually it will be 100% crap.
Incandescent has other advantages. For example, in winter time if it is cold and it is also dark in winter time, then the heat can be beneficial. In summer time you should not need the light so much since there is already the light. Either way you should not need to use the light too often, and if you do not use the light too often then you can save energy by that too, and does not need to be replace as often.
Of course, that electricity could still better be used to power a heat pump. Or the money saved on electricity could be spent on insulation, or, more likely, used to buy natural gas / propane which is usually extremely cheap per unit of energy.
Average lifespan of an incandescent bulb is about 1,000 hours. For a typical 60 watt bulb, that means it burns 60 kWh in electricity over the course of it's life. At $0.20/kWh, that means an incandescent is going to cost you $12 in electricity over its lifetime.
A Philips Ulta-Definition 4-pack of 60W-equivalent is $11.53 on amazon today, or $2.88 / bulb. That $3 bulb is actually 8W. So over those same 1,000 hours, that's 8 kWh, or $1.6 in electricity costs. So the $3 bulb saves you $10 in lifetime electricity costs vs. one incandescent.
But those bulbs are rated for 15,000 hours. Lets assume they all lie and deflate that by 1/3 (maybe a power surge will hit a few years in). That single $3 bulb still saves you 10 x $10 = $100 in electricity costs vs incandescents over its useful life. A bit more if you pay California electricity rates, a bit less if you live near some hydro co-op. But the difference is large enough that the effect is true no matter where you are.
So yeah, top-range lamps give better results than the cheapo stuff, but top range isn't that much more expensive, and the lifetime savings of going to LED are hard to ignore -- op-ex vs. cap-ex if you will.