Decorate with LED Christmas Lights to Conserve Energy and Cash

November 23, 2007
From The Colorado Springs Gazette

Christmas elves hoping to go from environmentally naughty to nice this year are making the switch to LED holiday lights.

LEDs — light emitting diodes — promise to be the biggest revolution in Christmas decorations since the advent of the inflatable. The lights use a fraction of the energy of conventional incandescent lights, up to 90 percent less, which saves folks some green while they go green.

A lot of people have yet to discover them or are put off by their high upfront cost, but several local enterprises, including the merchants of Old Colorado City, are turning to them because of their environmental and economical benefit. And this year, the tree in Rockefeller Center in Manhattan will be decked out with 30,000 multicolored LEDs.

Eventually, most people will make the switch to LEDs, predicts Kevin Hunt, who manages sales for Christmas Decor by Timberline in Colorado Springs.

“I think they will, especially with the price of energy, and it could be mandated by some municipalities,” said Hunt.

The Environmental Protection Agency says Americans will consume about 2,220 gigawatthours (GWh) of electricity with incandescent Christmas lights in 30 days during the holiday season.

If everyone in the country switched to LEDs, it would save about 2,000 gigawatt-hours of electricity — more power than Colorado Springs’ Martin Drake Power Plant produces in an entire year.

The LED is a solid-state device that does not heat a filament to create light; instead, electricity passes through a chemical compound that generates light. The technology has been around for decades and became commercially available in the 1960s, but there was work to be done before they could light up a holiday display.

Researchers struggled to make the lights strong enough to be good for anything besides red indicator lights.

And they had to work to make them emit attractive light.

Eventually, LED manufacturers were able to soften the hues of their white lights, turn up the brilliance on their colored lights, and make the flickering so fast that it’s not detectable. The improvements have made a believer out of Hunt.

“In the past we’ve always done the old incandescent bulbs, and with the new technology (of the LEDs), they’ve improved the color quality so much, they have much more vivid colors,” Hunt said.

Pricewise, LEDs cost about five times as much as incandescents upfront. But their life span is 50,000 hours, instead of 1,000-2,000 hours for incandescents. That means if you lit the LEDs for 45 days each year, 24 hours a day, it would take 46 years for them to dim.

So Hunt’s company urges its customers to go with LEDs instead of incandescents. He’s banking on lower replacement costs year to year, and likes that the hard-plastic LEDs are difficult to break. And, because they draw less power, LEDs allay his safety concerns at older homes.

“It costs us a little bit more, but in the long run it’s just better business. That’s years and years and years of use,” he said. “We feel pretty strongly and we want to get it out into the marketplace.”

Still, some people might be concerned about the lights’ looks. Aren’t LEDs the ones with that harsh bluish light? Can they really replicate a warm twinkle?

“They look different just because of the physics of the way they produce light,” said Philip Curtis of the online light distributor Holidayleds.com.

“It’s more efficient and produces light better, but people have been looking at incandescents for 120 years.”

One of the places Hunt decorates for free each year is the Ronald McDonald House at 311 N. Logan Ave. This year he made the switch to LEDs at the house, and manager Lyn Hale said she likes them.

“The house looks so nice when they’re done,” Hale said.

“They’re all the clear lights — the white — so they kind of frame the house. These seem brighter to me.”

Another fan is Nancy Stovall, who coordinates the “It’s Christmas in Old Colorado City” decorations put up by Old Colorado City retailers this time of year.

“We were using the regular, mini-incandescent lights on the tree, and we were looking for something brighter this year so we could see them more, even during the day,” said Stovall, who owns the Pine Creek Art Gallery at 2419 W. Colorado Ave.

So the merchants bought 120 sets of multicolored LEDs for the 30-foot blue spruce tree at the corner of 25th Street and Colorado Avenue, and 40 more sets to light up the garland wrapped around the shopping district’s light poles.

“I read a lot about the benefits of LED holiday lighting online, and we decided it was the economically and environmentally responsible thing to do,” Stovall said.

During the 45 or so days the lights will be illuminated, they will cost an estimated $26 in electricity, saving the merchants about $245 in utility bills over their old incandescents, according Holidayleds.com.

Stovall thinks it will take three or four years for the LEDs to pay for themselves.

Cost aside, the art gallery owner prefers the aesthetics of LEDs. “I like it,” Stovall said.

“It’s a lot more light on the tree and the garland, and they’re a lot brighter.”