Green Options » LED Christmas tree lights

Save Money and Energy on Christmas Lights this Year

Philip C. Curtis — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 16:23:49 +0000

Halloween is over and even though the trees still have green leaves because of the mild fall we are having, Christmas is just around the corner. Americans consume a lot of extra energy and create and extraordinary amount of waste during the holidays. In fact, it is estimated that we produce more than 1 million extra tons of garbage each week from the period between Thanksgiving and Halloween.

We also consume a great amount of energy. This is partly because this is one of the darkest times of year but its also because people are using more electricity to light up their homes with holiday decorations. Incandescent Christmas lights are inefficient and won’t last very long. They also break very easily. LED technology has found its way into the world of Christmas lights and is much more efficient. Specifically, LED Christmas lights use about 90% less energy than standard incandescent lights and will last for more than 50,000 hours. The bulbs are also covered with a durable epoxy plastic so they won’t break.

This year pay attention to you consumption during the holidays and do what you can to reduce your energy consumption.

LED Christmas Tree Light Experiment

Philip C. Curtis — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 02:10:40 +0000

This weekend we did a little early holiday decorating on my friends house. We’ve been reading a lot about LED Christmas tree lights and crunching a lot of numbers about their energy efficiency but we hadn’t really seen what they can do with our own eyes. So, this past Sunday (with leaves still on the tree and 75 degrees) we installed 2000 LED Christmas lights on my friends house and tree. We connected all 2000 lights together and plugged them into one plug which was connected to a watt meter. All 2000 lights only drew 150 watts of electricity. We did some math and determined that it would cost about $40 a year to run the lights for 8 hours a day for an entire year. I’m not sure if 2000 lights seems like a lot to the average reader but its quite a lot of lights. My friends back yard is very, very well lit.

If we did the same thing with incandescent lights it would draw over 1700 watts of electricity.

Now that they are up we are going to test their longevity. We are going to ask our friend Dave (or the Selling Machine as we call him) to leave them on 24/7/365 and see how long they will last. I’ll let you know if they are still burning next year at this time.

Powering LED Xmas Lights with Solar Power

Philip C. Curtis — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 00:49:38 +0000

LED Xmas lights consume only .072 watts of electricty per bulb. This means that a standard set of 70 LED Christmas tree lights will only draw about 5 watts of power. With the LED string lights drawing so little power one can easily operate a substantial outdoor display with a very basic solar power generation unit. A solar powered LED holiday light display would be ideal for homeowners in the southern U.S.

I would be very interested in hearing any comments anyone has on solar power units. We are hoping to set this up as a demonstration.

The Indestructible LED Xmas Light

Philip C. Curtis — Sat, 22 Sep 2007 05:32:25 +0000

One of the big reasons that Christmas lights suck is because they are so fragile. They break if the wind blows, they break if you drop them, they break if you smash them against the neighbor’s house (who’s Christmas display really blows), and sometimes they don’t work when you pull them out of the attic.
LED Xmas lights are not woosies like the standard incandescent lights. These things can take a punch. I was watching the Bert Hawley show the other night and he completely smashed a set of these lights with his microphone. I know, I know what you are thinking, Bert Hawley is a total wimp. I agree, Bert is a wimp but he wields a big heavy microphone which he employed in his futile attempt to smash these lights. I’ve seen videos where trucks run them over–they’re just plain tough.

So, besides using 80-90% less energy,LED Christmas tree lights are the Superman of the world of Christmas lights.

3 Reasons to Buy LED Holiday Lights

Philip C. Curtis — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 22:57:07 +0000

You know those gnarly Christmas lights you have stashed away in the basement, closet or attic? Well, here’s 3 reasons to leave them there this year and replace them with LED string lighting:

1. LED Christmas lights are 80-99% more efficient than standard incandescent lights.

2. LED holiday lights are safer than incandescent lights. They operate at 1 degree above ambient room temperature and draw so little energy that risk of circuit overload.

3. LED Christmas lights will save you money. Not only will you save money in the form of lower energy costs, but you will also save money because you won’t have to replace your Christmas lights every year. LED string lights have a useful life of over 50,000.