LED Christmas light consumption
How much electricity do they use?
I'm wondering about LED Christmas light consumption. Is it true that they use so little energy you shouldn't even worry about them? How much money am I likely to save by upgrading my current set of old incandescent Christmas lights with LED Christmas lights? I have about 200 of them. Is it worth throwing out what I've got and buying LED lights?
Answer from Green Energy Efficient Homes
LED Christmas light consumption is surprisingly low. I recently bought a string of 100 of the mid-size LED Christmas lights, and the package claims they use only 8 watts of electricity, which is less than even a very dim compact fluorescent bulb uses.
Most outdoor incandescent Christmas bulbs are 5 or 7 watts per bulb. So a string of 50 incandescent Christmas lights uses around 250 to 350 watts. Your 200 incandescent bulbs are therefore using about 1,000 to 1,400 watts when lit up, compared to the 16 watts of 200 LED Christmas lights.
Assuming a typical usage of 6 hours a day, for 3 months a year (540 hours in total), you are usng 540 to 756 kilowatt hours (kWh) for these bulbs. The LED Christmas light consumption for the same number of bulbs for this time period, is a mere 8 watts (per 100 lights) x 2 strings of lights x 540 hours, or 8.64 kilowatt hours.
In terms of the cost, it depends how much electricity costs in your area. A figure of 10-12 cents per kWh is not unusual for much of the US, so that set of 200 incandescent bulbs is probably costing you $54 to $90 a year to operate. For the LED Christmas light consumption you'd be looking at only $0.85 to $1.05 for the same number of bulbs.
The LED Christmas lights I bought cost $29.99 for a set of 100, though I'm sure you can do better if you shop around. Even so, assuming you spent a total of $60 on two sets of 100 LED Christmas lights, you'd be spending $60 on the lights plus about $1 on electricity in the first year, and $0 on the lights and $1 on the electricity in the second year. If you keep using your incandescent bulbs, you'll be spending $54 to $90 on the electricity every year until you replace them.
Based on that, I would say it would be well worth your while to replace them immediately. The payback depends on a number of variables but if you use them five hours a day for two months a year the payback is 1.5 to 2 years, and if you use them five hours a day for three months a year the payback is as little as one year.
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