The 'sticker shock' of the new LEDs remains

I have worked as an electrician and a technical manager in electronics over the years and in my opinion, LED lighting will be the way to go. So much so, I am configuring it into most of my designs for sustainable living, but there is reason for that (keep reading).
The problem is how long it will take the manufacturers to get the retail price to a point where most people can afford to cash in on the savings. As it stands now, most people get sticker shock from the prices on LED's (approx $36.00 each)and revert back to incandescents or CFL's. If you can bite the bullet and switch over you will see the amount electricity you use for your lighting fall to 10% of what incandescents use. There is a drop of 43% of CFL's currently offer. In the long run, we are talking 25 years worth of lighting here, the difference between LED's and CFL's gets down to only a 1.1% difference in savings due to the high cost of the LED's.
As it stands right now, CFL's are the greatest value for you buck in the short term but keep watching for a reduction in LED pricing. Once it gets to under $20 per bulb start replacing them. If you are utilizing solar for electricity, which now. The LED's will free up well over half of the electricity you are getting from CFL's and 90% from incandescents resulting in smaller systems, less batteries and lower cost.

Click on the title link above and see a great cost comparison chart.

Definitions
The incandescent light bulb, incandescent lamp or incandescent light globe is a source of electric light that works by incandescence (a general term for heat-driven light emissions, which includes the simple case of black body radiation). An electric current passes through a thin filament, heating it so that it produces light. The enclosing glass bulb contains either a vacuum or an inert gas to prevent oxidation of the hot filament. Incandescent bulbs are also sometimes called electric lamps, a term also applied to the original arc lamps.
A compact fluorescent lamp (CFL), also known as a compact fluorescent light or energy saving light (or less commonly as a compact fluorescent tube [CFT]), is a type of fluorescent lamp. Many CFLs are designed to replace an incandescent lamp and can fit into most existing light fixtures formerly used for incandescents.
A light-emitting diode (LED) is a semiconductor light source. LEDs are used as indicator lamps in many devices, and are increasingly used for lighting. Introduced as a practical electronic component in 1962,[2] early LEDs emitted low-intensity red light, but modern versions are available across the visible, ultraviolet and infrared wavelengths, with very high brightness.