CFL’s were a joke but LED’s are the real deal. I like light and I like it bright but warm. 90% of the lights in my home are now LED. An incandescent or CFL dies and it is promptly replaced with a LED with higher lumen output. Have not needed to replace a single LED yet. I even tried a 400 watt incandescent equivalent in the garage but it was way too cool a light. It glared way too much being a 1500K temp. Way prefer 2300 to 3000K.
On the grow light thing, cops looked for unusually high electricity bills and thermal signatures to spot pot growing operations. With LED grow lights their job got pretty near damned impossible.
I replaced all the incandescent bulbs in our home with Walmart brand LEDs that were on sale at 50% off. We then had to replace our AC unit when the 30 year old beast died. The combination of low energy bulbs and more efficient AC dropped our summer time power bill by 40-50%!! Living in the heat of south Florida, that is a big deal.
“if you pay for AC, LEDs have hidden savings.”
On the flip side, incandescents are essentially free in the winter - actually I can keep the house a degree or two colder in the winter if I put an incandescent in the reading lamp I keep by my recliner, which (other than the bed) is about the only place I need heat when I’m not moving around. When it comes time to switch over from the furnace to the AC, I switch from incandescent to LCD.
That’s what really ticked me off when incandescents were banned - that was legislation that operated on the assumption that everybody is stupid, and that nobody was capable of figuring out that most of the energy in an Edison bulb ends up as heat, not light. Well sometimes that heat is waste heat . . . but sometimes it’s not.
#10 and the power companies will jack up the electric rates to make up for you saving energy.
The state will go along as they get a percentage of the bill in taxes.