Tuesday, November 13th, 2007
Decorating LED style!
Decorations don’t have to be green to be green. Available for the past couple years at reasonable prices, LED options for holiday lighting are available alongside the standard mini-lights of the last 20 years. Unfortunately, most purchases are still mini-light strands. Using LEDs saves electricity, pure and simple. An equivalent strand of LED lights uses 80-90% less electricity than mini-lights and 99% less than the bigger (C7 or C9) lights common for many exterior decorations (those big bulb holiday lights).
If the US switched just 20% of the decoration lights this Christmas season, we would save 440 GWh of electricity, or about 300,000 tons of carbon dioxide based on the EPA national average of 1,363 lbs/MWh for electricity. That’s over 51,000 cars off the road for a year. or about 340 tons of carbon dioxide according to the EPA. That’s over 50 cars off the road for a year. And there are even more reasons to go LED. {thankyou to fire of energy for noting the miscalculation} LEDs are much safer as they produce practically no heat so they are not a fire hazard. Plus you can plug a whole lot more into the same outlet before it becomes dangerous.
Also, LEDs last much longer (50,000 hours for LED vs 2,000 hours for mini-lights), and LEDs are practically indestructible and easier to replace if one does fail. If a bulb breaks, the rest of the strand continues to work and you can easily identify and replace the failed LED with one of the spares that come with the strand. That is so much easier than trying every single bulb to figure out which one is busted, as with most mini-light strands. And boy was it a challenge when two mini-light bulbs were burnt out at the same time.
If you plan ahead, you can save big by buying your LED lights at after-holiday sales. I picked up a couple strands of orange Halloween LEDs for under $3 a piece from a half price Halloween clearance sale at a local drug store. For the past couple years a few friends, who do a bit more decorating with lights for the holidays, have been waiting until after Christmas to hit the mega stores like Target to stock up and replace their incandescent supply of mini-lights with highly efficient LEDs. Also, check your local bulk store like Costco, BJs or Sam’s Club. I’ve found some really good deals on name brand and store brand LED lights already this year.
So, here is my challenge to you. Go replace two strings of lights this year (or more if you can afford to). Donate your old lights so they don’t go into landfills just yet and provide someone a bit of joy they wouldn’t have otherwise. Replacing those two strands will save about 7.9 kWh or about $1.40 this year based on 30 W (versus 4W) per strand, 4 hours a day and a 35-day holiday season (I know, I can’t help but do a calculation or two).
Also, if you don’t already have one, get an automatic timer that senses dusk and can shut off 2, 4 or 8 hours after dusk so that you don’t have to remember to turn them on or off. I saw one recently in the $5-7 range at Home Depot. I expect you can get them in most hardware stores. Even the very efficient LEDs are wasting energy if they are running when no one is around to see them or it is too bright to enjoy them because the sun is out.
What’s beyond holiday lighting with LEDs? I’ve taken things a bit farther using LED holiday lights for room illumination. I have one strand of 90 white lights on a simple timer that provides a nice entry light for when we get home and only uses 4 W, which is far less than the 2 @ 13W Compact Flourescent Lights (CFLs) I have for the standard room lights.
on Tuesday, November 13th, 2007 at 7:51 pm:
This is great, Jon! Just don’t go to Sam’s Club. It’s owned by Wal-Mart, and therefore EVIL EVIL EVIL!
on Tuesday, January 15th, 2008 at 12:07 am:
440 GWh must = more than 18 THOUSAND cars off the road… (not just 50) !
Considering this excerpt;
“If the US switched just 20% of the decoration lights this Christmas season (to leds), we would save 440 GWh of electricity, or about 340 tons of carbon dioxide according to the EPA. That’s over 50 cars off the road for a year.”
Ok, I will argue ONLY the amount of “cars” this equates to…
It seems really odd that 440 GWh of juice would equate to ONLY 50 cars!
440 GWh = 440,000,000 kWh, if converted to Btu’ (x 3,414) = 1,502,160,000,000 Btu divided by, (I will assume) 113,000 Btu per gallon = 13,300,000 gallons per 50 “average” cars per year, / 50= 265,000 gallons per car… At that rate, each “car” would have to travel (at average 17 mpg) 4 and a half million miles per year!. Since the “average” is set at 12,000 mp year, I must / by 17 mpg = 705 gallons per car, really. Now, 265,000 gallons per car (from above encountered error) divided by 705 (about real number) = The above statement must be off by a factor of 375 times!
Thus 440 GWh = more than 18 THOUSAND cars off the road… ! And I thought it was going to be in the millions, oh well.
Now, if we can figure out how many gallons till the oil crunch… Better build that massive RE system now, or nuclear with breeders to save 99% of (otherwise wasted) non-renewable uranium!.
on Wednesday, January 16th, 2008 at 7:49 pm:
You are right, something is way off in the calculations. I’m looking back over my notes to see where it when wrong by several orders of magnitude.
on Saturday, February 9th, 2008 at 6:27 pm:
Here is how I get to the corrected 51,000 cars off the road:
From the EPA I get a US national average of 1,363 lbs CO2/MWh of electricity. Based on averages of 12,000 mile/year and 19.561 lbs C02/gallon and an average of 20.3 mpg I get the following:
440,000 MWh x 1,363 lbs/MWh = 299,860 tons of CO2 saved
299,860 tons/5.868 tons/car/year = 51,124 car/year
http://www.epa.gov/cleanenergy/energy-and-you/how-clean.html