- checking login information
Loading...Let There Be LED Light
- Jana Ballinger
- December 5, 2008
- 9:00 am
- 31 comments
One of the best part of the holidays is all the lights everywhere. They are so pretty and festive, but if you’re like me you can’t help think about all the energy they’re wasting. Christie Matheson, author of Green Chic: Saving the Earth in Style, has a solution.
According to her book, if you’ve decorated a tree with a string of about 300 mini-incandescent lights, you’ll use about 30 kilowatt-hours of energy (emitting about 45 pounds of extra CO2) over the holiday season.
If you use those big fat holiday lights, we’re talking more than 450 kilowatt-hours and close to 700 pounds of CO2. The mini lights are the preferable choice, and even better is a string of LED lights.
They’re available at Target, Costco and Lowe’s, and even though they cost more than incandescents (a string of 100 LEDs will run you $10-15), they last forever. OK, not forever, but 50,000 hours. And they use about 10 percent of the energy of the mini incandescents–less than 3 kilowatt-hours throughout the holidays.
Plus, they don’t get hot so your fire risk goes down.
Read more: Christmas, Hanukkah, Holidays, Household Hints, Life, Christmas tree, energy, kilowatt-hours, LEDs, lights
Jana Ballinger
Jana Ballinger has more than 15 years of experience as a writer and copy editor for daily newspapers. She lives in a vintage house in Northern California with her husband and an orange cat.
Go to the Source
Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may
not reflect those of
Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.
people are talking
Act now for minimising human impact on the environment
If you've been diagnosed with hypertension or high blood pressure, you should not take licorice root…
Wonderful, thanks for sharing.
While the man-made ones are impressive the natural wonders can't be beat!
I love Bees...they are hard worker and doing just good things.Ty
31 comments
+ add your ownThanks
Thanks for the info.
Thanks for sharing.
...but does every household really need to decorate??
I'd like to learn to make some LED solar lit garden ornaments. Does anyone know where I might get info on materials for such a project?
Thanks for the article.
The LED holiday lights are truly delightful. The colors are more vivid, and don't fade over time. They don't get hot like the incandescent lights, and some even come in a pale blue-white that just feels so "Ice palace festive."
Hopefully the high front end price of LEDs will continue to go down making them more attractive to the public. They last longer and the energy is so low compared to other lights.
LED lights are so much brighter and lasting.
I have LED light bulbs in every light in my house. I didn't know that they were available in Christmas lights. Although it is quite a way off, I do have a prelit tree but I would like to know if just the bulbs are available. If anyone knows, please let me know. Thank you. Elle Jorda
login to add your comment
use your care2 login
add your comment