LED, LED, LED all the way
Christmas is coming, how much power will your tree consume? (Setting aside for a moment the whole debate over live or cut evergreens in your living room.)
OK, so I’m as bad as the retail industry, what with writing about Christmas before it’s even time to give out scads of Halloween candy. But I’ve been stashing this particular item since late August and it IS Thanksgiving this week in Canada, where I’m vacationing. So, here goes.
HolidayLEDs.com is a lighting company focused not only on products that use light emitting diodes, but SPECIFICALLY on green lighting for holidays. Actually, they do more colors than green. I'm talking green tech here.
The company has a big push on this fall to get more cities to use its products on their publicly displayed town trees, thereby hoping to convince tree-trimming civilians to do the same. According to HolidayLEDs, its lights are already used on the national tree in Washington, D.C.; and the tree at New York City’s Rockefeller Center.
More recently, the company challenged the capital city of Lansing in its home state of Michigan to make the switchover by offering to replace its existing lights with comparable LED lights at the same cost. As of Oct. 4, that offer had not been accepted, but the company renewed its offer based on some new environmental initiatives that have been adopted by the state.
How much impact do holiday light displays have on electricity usage? According to HolidayLEDs, its LED lamps use approximately 90 percent less energy than standard incandescent lights (a savings of about $12 per holiday season), while lasting about 25 times longer to boot. They are also cooler, reducing the threat of fire as your try dries out. Here are some more stats to mull over.
Bah humbug! Of course, using LED strands will cost you more. A 24-foot strand of HolidayLEDs' single-color lights goes for about $19.99 if you buy it off the company’s Web site. That compares with about $9.99 for a 46-foot strand of regular lights bought off one of the larger holiday lighting sites on the Internet. But if you consider the more expensive strands might last you several years rather than the one year you usually get out of traditional bulbs (especially if you don't pack them away well), it might be worth finding the extra dollars.