LED Christmas Lights Rock! Low Power Consumption

[Apoptosis]

My neighbor and I have identical houses... For the past 5 years I've done multi-colors icecycle lights across the front of my house. My neightbor never has done any, but this year he went out and bought a ton of LED christmas lights and wrapped his entire house.

Just for fun I plugged my lights into one of my kill-a-watt power consumption meters and just the front of my house is consuming ~550W and 3+ Amps. My entire neighbors house with the LED lights consumes 18W and just 0.18 Amps... Insane.

So let's do some math here based on the national average for KWH (currently $0.10120 per KWH).

35 days at 6 hours a day -

My House - $11.69
Neighbors House - $0.38

550W sounds really bad, but when you do the math there is really only an $11 a year difference in the power bill. Is that worth the up front cost of LED lights? Maybe for starting from scratch it would make sense to go LED, but for me I'll just stick with what I have.

[skier]

my mom wants to upgrade, but we'll get them after christmas when the lights are discounted
because ours work for now

but thats a crazy difference, though i'm not too surprised

[Sparky]

We got fed up with troubleshooting strings of mini lights last year and bought LED lights at the after Christmas sales for indoors and out. Can't wait to see how they look. I know I won't miss looking for the burned out bulbs anymore this year.

[Illuminati]

My dad started going all LED last year... I have three strands of LED lights across the roof line of my house.

Besides the slight cost savings on your electric bill, you also have to consider maintenance (LEDs last a lot longer, so you should rarely have to replace a bulb) and aesthetics (with LED strands, you can connect something like over 50 strands off a single outlet, whereas with the old C7 big bulbs, you could only connect like 3). So even those that go crazy with Christmas lights will likely be able to power all of their christmas lights off a single outlet. This will really help those that are used to having a maze of extension cords dangling around the house.

[Apoptosis]

yeah... speaking of cords... This should improve fire safety as well.

[Sovereign]

I buy a single strand of lights for my dorm room. Every year, I've had to replace them because they burn out. It's not as if I leave them on all the time, either--they're on when I'm in the room later at night (if I am), and then when I go to bed. Figure an average of 8 hours a day, maybe. I figure if I'd gone with the (admittedly more expensive four years ago) lights then, I would still have lights that work now, and would have had to replace them zero times. I'm not sure how much stock can be put into the packaging, but it says something like 5.5 years of continuous running before the LEDs give out.

And then there's the power aspect. Can't wait to buy an LED laptop.

[geokilla]

Do the LEDs look any better than the ones that you currently have?