LED Christmas Lights
What to add some energy savings to your Holiday season? If you haven’t considered the purchase of LED Christmas lights lately, you should give them a second look. Adorning your home with strings of traditional lights wastes a lot of energy and can create undue frustration with maintenance issues.
LED Lights – The Revolution Has Arrived:
During the dark, cold days of December, many of us welcome bright, colorful Christmas lights, bringing a very festive appearance to our homes – Also the kids won’t let you forget that these lights will let Santa know where you live. Up until now, traditional Christmas lights have consumed a tremendous amount of electricity.
While many residents use these traditional Christmas lights, it is not unusual for utility bills to skyrocket during the holiday season. Many people were forced to give up on the traditional lights for some other decoration to help save money over the holidays. Several years ago, we began to see energy-saving LED Christmas lights arriving on store shelves.
The first generation of LED’s have been plagued with assorted problems. The white light strings often had a bluish hue and were far too bright. Also, colored light strings lacked the warmth that we were all drawn to in our lighting decorations. Keep in mind that when they were first introduced, LED Christmas lights were very costly as compared to the traditional lighting strings.
Thankfully, the manufactures of LED lighting have greatly advanced the technology in these lighting strings. They made the LED lights more natural looking, making them appear more like the lights we all grew up with.
LED Christmas Lights – Traditional Christmas Lights
Now consider that there are some significant advancements that have made LED lights more appealing. Of course the most obvious advantage is the reduced energy consumption. LED Christmas lights use a fraction of the energy used by traditional lighting strings.
A major retail chain made a comparison of LED lights vs. traditional lights.
LED Mini-Lights; 60 bulb string; Energy used: 4.8 watts
Traditional Mini Lights; 100 bulbs: Energy Used 40.8 watts
Note that the 60 LED bulbs output about the same amount of lighting brightness as the 100 traditional bulbs.
C9 LED Lights; 25 bulbs; Energy Used: 2.4 watts
Traditional C9 Lights of 25 bulbs consumes approximately 175 watts.
As you can imagine, if you deck you home with hundreds and even thousands of bulbs for the Holiday season, you can quickly see a payback in energy by the use of LED Christmas lights.
LED’s – Additional Advantages
By using LED’s you no longer need to deal with a completely dead light strings due to just one burned out bulb. As we all remember, just one bulb gave all kinds of grief with traditional bulbs. Although newer traditional lighting strings have eliminated this problem, the bulbs still have a very short life-span.
LED’s certainly do not suffer from this problem and with a bulb life of at least 25,000 hours, you will likely not have to purchase replacements for your lifetime.
LED’s are made from high-impact plastic and likewise there is not a fragile lighting filament to break.
LED Bulbs Are Very Cool In Operation
Merely touching a traditional bulb can cause a nasty burn, not to mention the fact that they are a fire hazard, especially when used indoors. Also, with their extremely low wattages, you can easily string dozens of strands together without the worry of overloading your electrical circuits.
As time passes, there is a growing variety of LED Christmas lights being made available to the consumer, ranging from icicles, snowflakes and many other shapes. LED’s are each controlled by a tiny processor, creating elaborate effects such as rapidly blinking strings to flashing lights.
LED Christmas Lights – Potential Disadvantages
Each year the list of potential disadvantages of LED lighting gets a little shorter.
Expense was one of the negative aspects of early LED lights. Each year LED’s drop in cost and are now coming in-line with costs as compared to traditional lights. Although keep in mind that the life-span and savings in operational costs of LED’s will more than make up for the cost difference.
More recently manufacturers have addressed the problems LED’s had with harsh color qualities, and the bluish hue of the white lights. You will find that the newer LED’s now have adjusted colors which are more toward the warm colors, including warmer white lights. The first colored LED lights were extremely harsh as well. That being said, when shopping for new LED Christmas lights, be sure to look for lights with a natural warm glow.
We feel that the new LED Christmas lights are THE way to go to save energy and reduce your power bills. With the cost of energy constantly on the rise, it does not make sense to use traditional lighting any longer.
Additional energy savings can be realized by turning off your Christmas lights during the day and in the middle of the night. Timers are very inexpensive and easy to install.