How Much Money do LED Christmas Lights Save?


But if you’d just like a quick back-of-the-napkin estimate, this typical holiday decorating scenario shows how you could save about $90 in energy bills over the next decade, by using LED lights instead of the traditional incandescent ones. Here’s a snapshot of the math:

One traditional incandescent mini light bulb, uses about .5 watts of energy. A typical LED string light bulb, uses about 1/8 the amount of energy, or about .07 watts. Let’s say you use 30 basic strands of incandescent mini lights, with 50 bulbs each, to decorate a couple of trees and the outside of your house. If you ran those lights four hours a night for a month, the cost would be almost $11, based on the average cost of electricity in the United States. (The cost savings are much more significant if we consider a much larger display, or a situation where you switch from the larger C7 or C9 style incandescent lamps to LED Replacement Bulbs. A typical incandescent C9 bulb uses 7-10 watts of power, while a LED C9 Replacement Bulb uses less than 1 watt – The larger the scale of the project, the more quickly the cost savings will add up.)

If you switched to LED lights, the cost to run those would be about $2.00, for the same amount of operating time. So multiplying those savings over 10 years, shows you could save $90. Obviously, this number will vary depending on how elaborate your decorating habits are, and what kind of products you use. But, it demonstrates that over time, switching to LED lights can save serious cash, as well as reducing demand for electricity (that’s only likely to become more expensive unless we begin to invest in more efficient and environmentally friendly options).

So what could you do with that $90? Well, it would buy a bicycle or scooter for your kids, a decent fly rod, a new pair of shoes, or some more LED Lights to add to your display. Or, you could simply save it, knowing that your choice to use LED holiday lights will pay all sorts of dividends long into the future.

Leave a Reply