Life-Cycle Costing & Total Cost of Ownership6 / 11
Life-Cycle Cost Examples
LED vs halogen, variable-speed vs fixed pump, condensing vs conventional boiler.
11 min read · Jacob Willis, Net Zero Lead · Last reviewed July 2026
The gap between purchase price and lifetime cost is easiest to feel through worked examples, so this lesson takes two of the most common energy decisions, a lighting choice and a pump choice, and follows the money all the way through. In both, the option that looks expensive on the shelf is dramatically the cheaper one to own, and in both, simple payback and life-cycle costing tell such different stories that the contrast is the lesson.
In this lesson
- 01Example 1: LED versus halogen, over the life
- 02Example 2: variable-speed pump versus fixed pump and valve
- 03Sources and further reading