LED Christmas Tree Light Experiment
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 $40 a year to run the lights for 8 hours a day for an entire year. I’m not sure if 2000 lights seems like a lot to the average reader but its quite a lot of lights. My friends back yard is very, very well lit.
If we did the same thing with incandescent lights it would draw over 1700 watts of electricity.
Now that they are up we are going to test their longevity. We are going to ask our friend Dave (or the Selling Machine as we call him) to leave them on 24/7/365 and see how long they will last. I’ll let you know if they are still burning next year at this time.
Tags: Conservation, Environment, Home and Garden, LED Christmas lights, LED Christmas tree lights, LED holiday lights, LED mini lights, LED xmas lights
November 19th, 2007 at 5:50 pm
Hi! I just wanted to mention that HomeDepot has long 200 light led strings available at a decent price (around 30$). We decided we wanted to start switching, and found that the only lights we could find were short strips which we running to be fairly expensive when you are looking to decorate the line of your house and some bushes.
Hope this info helps someone else looking for the info.
Kim
November 24th, 2007 at 2:32 pm
Yes, I’ve been looking for solar Christmas lights and have found a few at our locally owned garden center and at Target online.
I might go with the LED, as an alternative.
November 26th, 2007 at 5:28 pm
a 15 ‘ foot string was on sale at rite aid last week for 6.99. my dd agreed to trade in her strings of c-7 for them. that should slow the electric meter.
may i suggest that your friend not test all the lights all year. maybe just one string. that should reduce the energy use and the night time light pollution the neighbors endure and still give you the data you want.
blessings,
emmer
November 26th, 2007 at 6:17 pm
Hi there - very interested in using LEDs for holiday lighting, but I’ve seen a number of sets with a big ol’ warning stating that after handling the wiring (how else would you string them?) you had better wash your hands (and presumably keep away from the kids) because the wiring/coating has lead in it.
WTF? Anyone finding sets that do not have this warning?
Gracias,
Dan