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| LED Christmas Lights |
How cost effective are LED Christmas lights? How long will it take for them to pay for themselves?
Let's compare a string of 100 traditional incandescent Christmas mini lights to a string of 100 LED Christmas mini lights. The traditional lights use about 5 watts apiece, or 500 watts for the string. The LED Christmas lights use .05 watt apiece, or 5 watts for the string. So, we are talking about a savings of 495 watts...sounds pretty significant. How much does 495 watts cost?
The average kilowatt hour cost in the United States in August, 2011 was 11 cents per kilowatt hour. I cheated and used the Electricity Usage Calculator. We are going to assume running the lights for 36 days (Thanksgiving to New Years Day), for 16 hours per day. I think this would be fairly average Christmas tree usage. Obviously you would have to use different numbers for outdoor Christmas lights.
The traditional incandescent lights would cost $1/day or $36 for the Christmas season. The LED Christmas lights would cost almost a penny per day, or 36 cents for the Christmas season. I would think the average tree probably has 200 lights on it....so the LED Christmas lights would save about $72 for the season.
If you don't shop around much and buy the expensive LED lights - you are looking at about $30/string or $60 for the tree. That leaves you saving $12 for the season even after you bought brand new lights. Next year and the years after you'll be freerolling. LED lights have also proven to last MUCH longer than incandescent bulbs. It is rare for a string of incandescent lights to go 2 years without having to go through the hassle of finding bad bulbs. LED lights can go many years without a single bulb failure.
No brainer - throw out the incandescent Christmas lights and buy LED's now! You'll be able to put a few extra presents under that tree if you do.
