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What are more cost effective, LEDs or traditional Christmas lights?
We’ve broken down how much you save on your energy bill vs. how much you’d spend buying the lights to decorate your house. We’ve also determined how many years it would take to recoup the upfront cost of buying LED lights based on the energy savings. We’ll let the results speak for themselves.
- Energy costs are based on running your lights for 35 days, 6 hrs a day.
- Cost of lights are based on:
- 250ft of lights for the house (this is enough lights to easily do the trim of a home between 2800 – 3800 sq ft)
- 12 sets of mini lights (this is enough for two regular size trees)
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Energy Cost |
Cost of Lights |
Pay Back Period |
| C7s strand & clips - Power Use: 5 Watts - $.85 per ft |
$20.80 |
$212.50 |
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| C7 LED strand & clips - Power Use: 0.96 Watts - $2.25 per ft |
$3.97 |
$562.50 |
20 yrs |
| C9s strand & clips - Power Use: 7 Watts - $1.05 per ft ft |
$29.12 |
$262.50 |
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| C9 LED strand & clips - Power Use: 0.96 Watts - $2.55 per ft |
$3.97 |
$637.50 |
15 yrs |
| Long Icicle Lights - Power Use: 0.6 AMPs - $18.99 20ft set |
$15.00 |
$246.87 |
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| Short Icicle Lights - Power Use: 0.36 AMPs - $12.99 10ft set |
$17.50 |
$324.75 |
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| Short LED Icicle Lights -Power Use: 0.02 AMPs - $27.99 7ft set |
$1.43 |
$1007.64 |
42 yrs |
| Short Mini Lights - Power Use: 0.36 AMPs - $5.99 25ft set |
$8.64 |
$71.88 |
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| Short LED Mini Lights - Power Use: 0.02 AMPs -$18.99 25ft set |
$.48 |
$227.88 |
19 yrs |
| Long Mini Lights - Power Use: 0.6 AMPs - $10.99 50ft set |
$14.40 |
$131.88 |
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| Long LED Mini Lights - Power Use: 0.04 AMPs -$31.99 50ft set |
$.96 |
$383.88 |
19 yrs |
While LEDs consume much less energy than traditional Christmas lights their extremely high price tag makes them a poor choice for the average home owner. The technology is still new and still very expensive. However, we do anticipate them to drop in price in the future.
So when should you consider LEDs?
Using LEDs are a good idea if you are going to be installing an extremely large display 50+ AMPs (3 ½ circuits). At this point other costs start coming into play such as adding new outlets, buying more extension cords and spending more money on labor or even your own time.
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