Seven years ago engineer Mike Brakey was looking over his household electric bills and was shocked at how much power it took to run his Shaker Heights home.

And it was a bit embarrassing.

Brakey is the founder of Brakey Energy Inc., an energy management consulting business with more that 60 corporate clients.

But his home was a power hog. He calculated that he was spending an average of $170 per month on power and far more during some months.

The house was gobbling 1,400 kilowatt-hours per month, nearly three times what FirstEnergy said its average residential customers were using.

Today Brakey's home uses about 500 kilowatt-hours per month and his monthly bill is often below $40.

One reason is the LED light bulb, the "light-emitting diode" that General Electric researchers invented 50 years ago, which is now the focus of intense competition among all of the major lighting manufacturers.

"There are two races going on," said Todd Manegold, the LED product manager for Philips Electric. "One is the race to equivalency. It's about delivering light bulbs that replicate or imitate what people are used to.

"Once you reach equivalency, the game is how to make it more affordable. We think we have gotten it more affordable."

Industry experts say that within a decade LEDs will eclipse conventional lighting such as halogen and compact fluorescent bulbs - and not because of any new government regulations, but rather because it will just make sense economically.

The switch is already under way for commercial customers, especially in new construction, where newly designed fixtures incorporated LEDs.

But there are an estimated 2.6 billion light bulb sockets in American homes, making them the big prize for the industry.

Philips already offers LED bulbs to replace the conventional 40-watt, 60-watt and 75-watt.

Both Philips and GE say that by year's end they will offer an LED bulb of about 20 watts or less to replace the old-fashioned 100-watt bulb that became illegal to manufacture or import on Jan. 1.

Bipartisan Congressional legislation approved in 2007 and signed by then-president Bush bans the manufacture of the most common and least efficient incandescent light bulbs, starting this year with the 100-watt bulb, banning the 60-watt and 75-watt next year and the traditional 40-watt in 2014. Manufacturers have already produced halogen-based replacement bulbs that produce the same amount of light, are 30 percent more efficient and cost between $1 and $1.50.

LED bulbs are about 90 percent more efficient but are still far more expensive than any other light you can buy, more expensive than old fashioned bulbs, than halogens and CFL bulbs.

The price of the Philips 12.5-watt LED replacing the old 60-watt bulb is now about $25 - but that's down from $40 a year ago.

Prices also have fallen for GE's 40-watt equivalent lamp bulb.

Released two years ago with great fanfare as the first household LED able to push out light in all directions, the 8.5-watt bulb price was $50. Now it sells for $30 to $35.

Philips looks at compact fluorescent bulbs and especially its halogen bulbs that look and act like conventional light bulbs as "bridge technology" to LEDs -- products that people will use until LEDs become more affordable.

It's the same story at GE Lighting. "Think of it as a lighting revolution," said Linda Pastor, LED product manager for GE.

The switch will take less than a decade, many industry watchers say.

"I absolutely believe that the incumbent lighting technology will be replaced by solid state alternatives -- all of them with very rare exceptions, within 10 years," said Tom Griffiths, president and publisher of Austin-based Solid State Lighting Design News.

It's all about lumens per watt, Griffiths explained, meaning how much light does each technology produce per watt burned.

The more lumens per watt, the fewer watts you will need.

Old-fashioned light bulbs put out 10 to 15 lumens per watt -- or about 800 lumens for a 60-watt bulb. A CFL gives off 40 to 60 lumens per watt.

"The technology is now at point, where LEDs can produce 100 to 150 lumens per watt. They are now the most efficient white light source."

Because LEDs are electronic, Griffiths and other analysts expect the price to come down quickly as production ramps up - just as the price of computers, flat screen TVs, smart phones and other electronic equipment has fallen.

For most consumers, that price at which it will make sense to buy an LED that will last 20 years is somewhere between $10 and $20, Griffiths said.

Martin Winston, editor of the Cleveland-based Newstips Bulletin, thinks prices will have to tumble even lower.

"The manufacturers all know that there won't be any widespread consumer adoption of LED light bulbs until prices fall below $10 and they see that as being five to seven years away," he said.

The sheer size of the industry, innately an obstacle to such new technology, will eventually make its adoption lightning-like.

The lighting industry is a $100 billion worldwide market, said Griffiths, and when LED prices reach what consumers feel is the best buy for the money, the adoption of LEDs will be sudden.

Back in 2004 at Brakey's home, the path from 1,400 kWh to 500 kWh per month was a bit more difficult and more costly than what consumers will soon be able to do. But it has already paid for itself.

Initially, Brakey tried what most consumers have done. He embraced conservation. He turned off lights, installed kill switches on electronics and bought compact fluorescent bulbs

By 2008 he and his wife, Cindy, who is the majority owner of Brakey Energy, began replacing appliances and electronic equipment.

By 2010, Brakey decided LED light bulbs had to be part of the effort.

"I had concerns that energy prices would go even higher," he recalled in a recent interview from a well-lit office where only LED light bulbs are used.

But to go to such extremes often requires an ideology.

"I am not into global warming theories," Brakey said when asked why he would spend more than $2,400 just for LED bulbs to replace every bulb in the home -- all 88 of them.

"I am into a certain kind of green," he said. "It's called be as economical as possible."

The blow-up between FirstEnergy and its all-electric customers over rates also drove the project, Brakey said.

Citing deregulation by the state, the Akron-based electric company ended most of the subsidy it had given for three decades to customers who agreed to heat with electricity. Consumer outrage and state pressure lengthened the end of the subsidy to several years.

"I had big concerns about what was happening with the electric homes," Brakey said. "I wanted to show that you could reduce energy consumption with straight-forward applications of existing technology"

Most experts think power prices, now depressed because of the recession, will rise, especially as tighter pollution controls force the closing of some coal-fired plants, retrofitting of others and the construction of new gas-fired power plants.

Brakey sees it as a kind of storm, a hurricane. "This is the time to batten down the hatches and get ready for the backside of the storm," he said.

But don't buy a 12-pack of LEDs just yet, he adds.

"When do you bite the bullet? I think there will be a large drop in prices and leap forward on quality in the first six months of this year," he said. "I would say second half of this year, consumers will begin to see excellent prices."