Ye I went to a Middy's electrical supplies enquiring about a solar system.... The salesmen basically talked me out of solar and into LED bulb conversions instead because if you are not at home thru the day with solar the power goes back into the grid (Feed In Tariff) and that presently only pays 8c per kilowatt.....Solar only works if you also have a battery pack to store the power... So end of day, LED bulbs are MUCH cheaper than 10-15k on a solar system.. Apparently there are some new batteries in Europe at the moment that use graphite instead of lead and they hold 1000's times more power than a lead acid battery.... It will be a few more years before they are commercially available though..
Households using old (incandescent) bulbs typically use 1/3 of their electricity on lighting. Reducing consumption on lighting from ~33% to 6%-7% is roughly a 25% saving off your overall usage i.e. huge. You can work out the pay-back time on particular LED bulbs pretty easily yourself, but it's damn quick and it's not as if you're going to stop needing to light your house any time soon.
