Holiday LED Lights (Christmas Lights)
This year use holiday LED light strings to decorate your tree, windows, or entire house. These energy-efficient light strings use a new light-emitting diode (LED) technology that is superior to standard incandescent light strings.
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Lisa Coltart, Director of Power Smart rides an LED bicycle-powered billboard in Vancouver. For each hour the billboard was lit by human energy, BC Hydro made a donation to the B.C. Chapter of the Canadian Association of Food Banks. 200 volunteers used human power to illuminate the billboard for five days at the end of November, 2006. One person riding a bike can power 1,500 LED bulbs. As a comparison, if the billboard was lit by mini incandescent lights, there would only be 120 bulbs. |
Compared to holiday incandescent light bulbs, holiday LED strings:
- use up to 95% less energy;
- last at least 10 times longer;
- are more durable, with no filaments or glass bulbs to break; and
- produce very little heat, reducing the risk of fire.
Holiday LED bulbs come in a variety of shapes although the most common style is the "strawberry" shaped C-6* bulb. Choose from red, green, yellow, blue and white bulbs, generally in strings of 35 or 70 lights.
*C-6 designates the width of the bulb in eighths of an inch; thus C-6 is 6/8". Traditional holiday lights are C-7 or C-9 – typically 5W and 7W respectively.
Holiday Lighting Comparison
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Decorating an 8-foot christmas tree:
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| Type of Bulb | Power Required (Watts) | Energy Used (kWh/yr) | Cost of Electricity/yr | Approximate number of strings & bulbs needed |
| Incandescent C-7 (5 watt) | 625 | 97 | $6.13 | 5 strings, 125 bulbs total |
| Incandescent mini lights | 150 | 23 | $1.47 | 3 strings, 300 bulbs total |
| LED C-6 "strawberry" lights | 14 | 2 | $0.14 | 4 strings, 280 bulbs total |
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Decorating a 100-foot building outline (windows or eaves):
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| Type of Bulb | Power Required (Watts) | Energy Used (kWh/yr) | Cost of Electricity/yr | Approximate number of strings & bulbs needed |
| Incandescent C-7 (5 watt) | 500 | 78 | $4.91 | 4 strings (each 25 feet long), 100 bulbs total |
| Incandescent mini lights | 200 | 31.00 | $1.96 | 4 strings (each 26 feet long), 400 bulbs total |
| LED C-6 "strawberry" lights | 14 | 2 | $0.14 | 4 strings (each 24 feet long), 280 bulbs total |
Assumptions
- Holiday lighting is used for 31 days a year, for 5 hours a day.
- The cost of electricity is about 6.33 cents per kilowatt hour (kWh) (the price paid by BC Hydro's residential customers).
Note: A kilowatt hour is equivalent to turning on ten, 100-watt light bulbs for one hour.
