We hear this question all the time, especially in the summer.

Our rule of thumb – it takes one watt of air conditioning to cool three watts of lighting.

For a more precise calculation, there are a few things that we need to know about heat

• A BTU, or British Thermal Unit, is the traditional unit for heat or heat removal
• A ton of refrigerant is 12,000 BTUs.
• One watt of energy is equal to 3.412 BTUs

When you turn on a light some of the energy is turned into photons and some of the energy is turned into heat. In the case of LEDs, about 40% of the energy is turned into light and 60% is turned into heat.

Unfortunately…. you need to cool all of the energy, even the energy emitted as light. (more…)