LED Holiday Lights Are Bright In More Ways Than One
If you’re finally getting around to putting up those holiday lights, and you want a change - you might consider energy-saving LED lights this year. If you’ve already priced them, you know they cost more - sometimes twice as much - but why? The answers could save you money long after the holidays pass us by.
Light-emitting diode - or L-E-D lights - are constructed from tiny solid-state chips which convert electricity to light without the use of a filament or glass bulb. Without the filament, there is nothing in the bulb to “burn out” and there’s very little heat produced… unlike the incandescent bulb, where roughly 90% of the electricity used by the bulb goes to heat that’s produced by the bulb.
So because LEDs don’t produce heat, they use 90-99% less energy than regular holiday lights, but the technology makes them burn up to 10 times brighter. They are also safer because they are cooler to the touch, hence cooler to whatever surface you string them to or wrap them around, and they practically last forever! LEDs have a 50,000-plus hour bulb likfe outdoors - and indoors it can be up to 100,000 hours or longer! Provided the dog or cat doesn’t chew on them between treats.
Incandescent mini-lights use 10 times more energy than LED minis, and the larger ones use 100 times the energy of the LED version of the same size. So, here’s the real payoff. A household using a string of 1000 LED lights for 6 hours a days spends only 50 cents a month to power them. While the same number of regular mini-lights would cost about $5 a month in electricity and the larger C7s or C9s would run up an extra $50 or more on your monthly power bill.
And here’s another bonus, when and IF one of the LED bulbs does go out, the rest of the string stays lit, unlike the old kind where you have to endlessly search each and every little socket until you find the faulty bulb! I know you hate that as much as I do! To me - that’s worth the extra money right there. What a bright idea for the holidays!
Sphere: Related ContentTags: holiday lights, LED lights
December 11th, 2009 at 7:24 am
I put up the large outdoors LED lights around my roof and they were not as bright as the old large light bulbs. I took them down and put the old ones back up. I took the LED lights back to Homedepot for a refund. They might save energy but if you can’t see them from the street what good are they.
December 11th, 2009 at 7:27 am
Ah shoot, Steve. I’m sorry to hear that. I had several people tell me they like the big LED C7s and C9s as well - if not better than- the old ones. But everybody has a different experience for sure! Thanks for sharing and glad to hear your holidays are bright again!
March 16th, 2010 at 10:14 pm
LEDs don’t produce heat, they use 90-99% less energy than regular holiday lights!