Holiday Lights

I love holiday lights. When I was mistress of my own power system, I turned on strings of little incandescent lights as soon as it got dark. Why not? I was running a 5KW Northern Lights diesel generator and I was told that it could use the “load.” Then I went on the grid. I couldn’t be happier, but I had to get smarter. It turns out that those incandescent lights are little suckers – perfect when I wanted to put a load on the generator, not so great when I am paying per KWH for the pleasure of the twinkling ambiance.

So I set out to figure out how much I was paying for my incandescent holiday lights. According to Save Energy, the traditional incandescent bulb used for holiday lights is called a C7. Each bulb on a string uses 6 watts. So a typical strand of 50 lights uses 300 watts or .3 KWH. We pay for our electricity per KWH. At the AP&T current residential rate of $.1444/KWH, one strand of incandescent lights costs $.04 an hour. Not bad. But hey, who has just ONE strand and who leaves the lights on for just ONE hour? Today, for example, I turned my lights on at noon! I don’t expect to turn them off until I go to bed – 11 maybe. So that’s $.44. And guess what? I don’t have one strand! No. I have 6! So, that’s $.04 x 6 x 11 or $2.64. And that’s just today. But realistically, let’s say on average I turn these lovely lights on for 6 hours each day during the holiday months of November and December. Thirty days has November, but December has 31. So that’s 61 x 6 hours x 6 strings x $.04/KWH per string = $87.84!! That’s quite a bump in my electric bill.

So, here’s what I’m going to do. I’m not giving up lights. I’m just giving up incandescent lights. I’m switching to LEDs. Let’s see how this work out. Each LED bulb uses .08 watts, so a 50-bulb string uses 4 watts, which is .004 KWH. (Convert watts into kilowatt-hours by dividing watts by 1000). At our residential AP&T rate of $.1444, .004 KWH is $.00058. Let’s see. Using the same formula as I did with the incandescents, $.00058 x 6 x 6 = $.02088 for 6 strands of LED lights on 6 hours. If I ran them for 61 days at that rate, I will add $1.27 to my electric bill – a savings of $86.57 – almost enough to pay for the 6 new strands of lights which cost me $14.99 per strand at a Howser’s here in Haines. Presto. The “savings” nearly pays for itself. And oddly, the longer I leave them on the more I “save.”

I have to point out that the most savings would come from not having any holiday lights on at all! It’s been said, and I can’t deny it, that the cheapest unit of electricity is the one you don’t use. That means don’t plug in those incandescents AND don’t buy the new LEDs. If you decide to plug in your old lights because after all, they still work, don’t they? – you are burning a lot of money with absolutely no return to yourself in savings – because in addition to using very little electricity to glow, LEDs have an exceptionally long life.

But it’s the holidays and holidays are for a little splurging – however, in these tough economic times, I’m for a splurge that ends up in a save. How about you?