Is Philips Hue Energy Efficient?

Smart lighting systems are supposed to save you electricity, but is Philips Hue energy efficient? With rising electricity costs each year, homeowners are mostly concerned with whether buying Philips Hue bulbs will actually help them save some money.

Considering the number of features that come with Philips Hue bulbs, there is no doubt that the bulbs live up to their expectations, even though they are a bit pricey.

The Philips Hue bulbs are energy efficient and consume 75% less energy than conventional incandescent lighting.

However, we need to dig a bit deeper and see how much consumers can save at the end of the day. Let’s begin.

Philips Hue bulbs can help save money: A comparison with other bulbs

Philips Hue bulbs are essentially manufactured and designed as LEDs. However, these are not your regular LED bulbs. Philips has made sure that its Hue bulbs use far less energy to provide maximum brightness. Typically, LED bulbs consume 90% less energy than both halogen and incandescent lights.

The reason behind this is that the halogen and incandescent lights contain a filament that helps produce light. Therefore, the problem is that 90% of the electricity passing through these lights turns to heat, while only 10% is converted to light.

However, in the case of LED bulbs like Hue, a comparatively less amount of heat is produced as a by-product and only consumes the amount needed to produce maximum brightness. The energy isn’t wasted.

In addition to that, halogen or incandescent bulbs only last 1,500 hours on average, whereas LED lighting systems like Philips Hue can last for 15,000 hours, which reduces the replacement costs as well.

Philips Hue app and energy efficiency

In addition to the Hue bulbs consuming less electricity, the app used to run the bulbs is pretty smart as well. For instance, it comes with certain features that allow you to control the bulbs to help save up on even more electricity.

The app can locate your GPS signals and will automatically turn the lights on and off upon reaching or leaving the house. This way, even if you forget to switch the lights off while leaving the house, the app will simply turn them off once you have left the Wi-Fi network.

Philips Hue bulbs energy consumption statistics

Philips Hue bulbs consume around 0.08-0.09 Amps when turned on and adjusted to maximum brightness.

In the off state, the bulb consumes 0.01 to 0.02 Amps since it requires some power to communicate with the network. This means that the bulbs are consuming some power, even in the off state.

On the other hand, if you have a network of 50 or more Hue bulbs spanning throughout the house, each bulb will draw 1W to run the communication hardware. If you do the math, the bulbs will be consuming 236kWh of power each year, which sums up to $24.

This is negotiable compared to the regular replacement of halogen or other bulbs. Therefore, even though the Philips Hue bulbs do not remain fully turned off and require some power to communicate, the electricity consumption is far less.

Furthermore, Philips Hue promises 9.5 watts of power consumption on average. That said, at 100% brightness, the Hue bulb will consume around 9 Watts. If the bulb is left on for a year, it will cost you $10.82. Meanwhile, if the bulb was used at 75% brightness, the consumption would roughly be around 5 Watts. And if it remains turned on for a year, the running cost would be $5.69.

Concluding thoughts on whether Philips Hue is energy efficient

There is no doubt that smart LED bulbs like Philips Hue can cost you a lot upfront. However, the good thing is that you get to save up on electricity and replacement costs, which makes the investment worth it in the long run.