Holiday Savings | Green Energy News

November 30, 2003 – Vol.8 No.36

HOLIDAY SAVINGS.

For centuries now, in a tradition that began in the Northern Hemisphere, a celebration of light has taken place to lift the human spirit near the winter solstice when the days are the shortest, darkest and most depressing. The celebration is now known the Christmas Holiday season.

But the lights hanging from trees and buildings in joy and celebration also come at some cost to individuals, businesses and thus the national energy bill. A study by the U.S. Department of Energy - Energy Savings Estimates of Light Emitting Diodes in Niche Lighting Applications - reveals that conventional holiday lights, like the popular miniature incandescent lights, could be replaced with LED lighting to save a least 2-billion kilowatt hours of electricity in the 30-day holiday season. That’s enough electricity to power about 200,000 homes for a year, according to the study.

The study did not include similar conventional decorative lighting used in commercial seasonal and year round applications - in restaurants, stores and shopping malls - that could also be replaced with LED decorative lighting for even greater savings.

There appears to be only one major manufacturer of LED Christmas lights - Holiday Creations. According to the company its LED’s save about 80-90 percent on electricity as compared with conventional lights, operate on household current without a transformer, last for more than 20 years and, as expected with efficient LED’s, are cool to the touch. (Hot burning conventional lights should be a safety concern when strung on dried-out indoor trees.) Visit Holiday Creations at http://www.foreverbright.com/ , for the U.S. DOE Niche Lighting study visit http://www.netl.doe.gov/ssl (click Publications)