Five Ways to Offset Your Holiday Energy Consumption

If you're like millions of Americans, you just completed setting up your Christmas tree and have strung holiday lights all around your house and yard.  And if you're like most people, you are spending $1.00 to $5.00 per day to run those lights.

Most people tend to run their displays from the Sunday after Thanksgiving through to the weekend past New Year's Day.  That is about 40 days, meaning many people are spending $40 to $200 just to run their holiday light displays.

How can you offset this usage?  There are many ways!


First, let's take a closer look at the $1 to $4 numbers I referenced above.

A minimal display of 500 mini lights uses 250 watts.  If they run 12 hours a day, 3 KwH of electricity is consumed, equating to a $0.40 electric bill increase at my fairly typical Arizona electricity rate.

Now consider that a typical prelit 7' Christmas tree has 500 to 750 lights, it is easy to see the modest 500 light display is a drop in the bucket.  A more typical display (tree plus a shrub or two with lights in the front yard, or perhaps one roof line) may use 1500 lights, and if any of those are larger bulbs, you can easily consume 2500 watts, making that 14 hour display a 35 KwH $5 per day electricity guzzler.

How can you reduce and offset this usage?

Run Your Holiday Lights on a Timer

As has been previously discussed, use a timer and run your lights during peak hours - such as 5 PM to Midnight and 5 AM to 7 AM. That reduces that 14 hour display to a 9 hour display - a 35% reduction.

Consider Integrating LED Lights Into Your Display

LED Christmas lights are more vivid, last longer, run cooler, are less of a fire hazard, and allow you to string together many more strings on a single circuit.

Of course, they also cost more, but that can be worth it. be sure to check out Six Ways to a Green Christmas for all of the details.  But as you can see below, you can achieve huge power savings with LED strings.

Typical Holiday Light Power Consumption

Holiday String Lights	Typical Energy Used
7 Bubbler Lights	49 watts
100 Mini Lights	50 watts
100 C7 Bulbs - 5 Watt	500 watts
100 C9 Bulbs - 7 Watt	700 watts
100 LED C7 lights	12 watts
100 LED mini lights	8 watts

Use Your Extra Electricity Usage as Motivation

When you're out and about this holiday season, pick up a couple of CFL bulbs to help offset your usage. Perhaps a programmable thermostat or a Smart Strip or two. And take a few minutes to check out your power saving functions on your computer and make sure you use them. Don't let your computer run 24/7 unless you are performing a specific activity!

Simple put, review the Five Ways to Automate Power Savings, Vampire Power, and How to Save $100 in Computer Power Use and take those suggestions to heart.

Try an Early New Year's Resolution

Make it a resolution to start following the Eleven Habits of Highly Energy Efficient People today! As you will see, you can save $250 in a year by changing your bad habits into good ones.