Start shopping for next Christmas!

Well, I finally took the lights off the tree and dragged it out the front door so for us, the holidays are officially over.  But is it too early to start thinking about next year?

Taking the lights down got me thinking again about whether this is the year I'll switch from incandescent mini-bulbs to LEDs.  I guess if I'm going to blog about being a Sustainable Family, then I better really consider it.  When I bought my current lights a few years ago to replace my last set, LEDs were not as readily available and the few that were seemed too expensive to pay for themselves through increased efficiency.  But is that still true?

With a quick scan of online sellers, I found that LED mini lights seem to cost about twice as much as incandescents ($18 vs. $9 for 100 lights).  So now the question is how much energy will you save using the LEDs?  According to ConsumerReports, you’ll probably save enough to justify the purchase.  They tested LEDs and incandescents side-by-side using an independent laboratory.  What they found was that, during 300 hours of use, 50 LED lights use about 1-3 kilowatt hours of energy, while the incandescents used from 12-105 kWh.  On average, the cost to operate 100 mini lights for this amount of time is about $2 for LEDs and $22 for incandescents.  So, at a savings of $20 per 100 lights, you have more than paid the difference in initial cost of the lights… and that’s only for tree lights.  Obviously, if you are one of those people who tries to make the front of your house look like the Las Vegas Strip, your savings will be much greater.

Need more reasons to switch your holiday lights to LEDs?  How about durability?  After 4,000 hours of testing by Consumer Reports, all the LED lights in their test strings were still lit, while each of the incandescent test strings had one or more lights burn out in less than 2,000 hours.  In addition, LED mini lights are generally encased in plastic, which makes them less likely to break when dropped or stepped on as opposed to their glass-encased incandescent counterparts.

Bottom line:  If it's time for new Christmas lights, switch to LEDs.  In addition to the obvious cost savings, they are better for the environment, they are less of a fire risk because they run cooler than traditional incandescents, and they last longer.  And now is a great time to buy them and get even more "post-holiday" savings.    If you’ve already switched to LEDs, I’d love to hear about your experience with them so feel free to leave a comment.