I’m so sick and tired about hearing about “the state of the economy”. It’s starting to become a cliché in just about every budget advice column. I really hate to use it, but here goes…
Given the state of the economy (I hate saying that), everyone is covering their cookie jars and hoarding every nickel. Not only are people looking for thrifty gifts, but they are cutting back on certain luxuries. There are certain ways to gauge or measure how much of your budget you’re actually using, like using cash instead of debit cards. When you don’t actually see your resources going out then it becomes easy to take it for granted.
The same holds true with electricity, which are a bit like icebergs: it’s what you DON’T see that can kill you. Most people have no idea exactly how much electricity they use, even when the monthly bill comes. People just know if it “seems high” over previous months, because there’s no “ran computer for 96 hours” line item on the bill. This article will show you how to take control, measure, and curb the average family’s additional electricity spending during the holidays.
Incandescent Lighting is Evil
This goes without saying, so I’ll just get this out of the way first. If you only take away one thing from this article, remember this: Incandescent lighting is one of the most inefficient uses of electricity.
There are times when you can’t use fluorescent or LED bulbs, like in a dimmer. These bulbs will either not turn on, flicker, or could even be damaged by an analog dimmer. Most people will not have holiday lights on a dimmer, but this is just something to keep in mind if you’re on an aggressive household energy-saving campaign.
When it comes to incandescents, the brighter the bulb is generally translates into more energy usage. Regular light bulbs tell you exactly how much electricity they’ll consume… a 100W light bulb will consume about 100 Watts every hour. From this, you can easily calculate the electricity usage during a month by doing some simple math.
On the next page we provide the tools on how to measure holiday lights…
The biggest weapon in your arsenal to battle high energy bills is the ability to measure. Most holiday lights have no electricity consumption rating on the package (as our 100W lightbulb example), so how do you begin to make any calculation? You can find a P3 Kill A Watt meter (or something similar) for about $30 at any hardware store, and these handy devices can tell you how many watts a particular appliance is using and have many other uses. For example, it can tell you how clean the outlet power is, and can be used to sum up electricity needs when shopping for a generator. In my line of work, it is an essential tool when measuring the efficiency of PC power supplies.
Most electric companies measure electricity (and bill) by the Kilowatt Hour, and where I live this costs 0.7269 cents. A Kilowatt hour is the cost of running 1000 watts for one hour. Our 100W light bulb will have to run for 10 hours to reach 1 Kilowat of usage (100 x 10 = 1000). So if you run that light bulb 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for a full month then that bulb will cost you $52.33.
100W x 24 hours x 30 days / 1000 = 72 Kwatt hours
72 Kwatt Hours x 0.7269 = $52.33
Now that you have a tool to actually measure, then you need to go around the house and test. You’ll be surprised at how much extra electricity is being used during the holidays. Below are the consumption results from several decorations around our house:
| decoration | Wattage |
| 7′ Christmas Tree (400 mini bulbs) | 296 W |
| 7′ Pre-lit Christmas Tree (350 mini bulbs) | 243 W |
| Outisde display of 75 C7 lights + 200 incandescents: | 640 W |
| 3′ pre-lit christmas tree (75 mini bulbs) | 50 W |
| string of 30 incandescent bulbs | 25 W |
| Snowman with 2 C4 bulbs | 14 W |
| 600 LED String Lights | 4 W |
LED lights use about one-tenth the electricity of incandescents
It actually shocked me (figuratively, not literally) when I took these values. These measurements mean that each lit Christmas tree is the equivilant of a high-end PC… now imagine the extra costs of running three or four PCs nonstop for a whole month. You can see that LED lights use significantly less electricity than lights that use incandescent technology, because LEDs are about 98% efficient. Using our same formula it costs $1 to run LED lights for an entire month, as opposed to $30 for comporable string lights.
Most people aren’t in their right minds during the holidays (which is the only possibly explanation for surges in electric shavers and holiday sausage baskets) so people may not think about some simple things they can do to curb energy costs. If these tips seem like common sense to you then I’ll send you your complimentary “I’m a freakin’ genius” medal so everyone will know when you enter a room.
When my wife and I are in the Christmas mood, we like to have holiday music blaring throughout the house. It is a lot easier to tune DirecTV to channel 801 (XM’s holiday channel) rather than hooking up an iPod. The problem with this is that TVs use up a lot more electricity than a personal stereo… to the tune of about 200 Watts more. If you have external speakers in your home theater rig, then turn off the TV when you listen to music, especially if it’s just “background music”.
Battery power?
You would think that you could augment electricity usage by using string lights with battery power. My wife bought a few such devices, but they were incandescent bulbs and drained the two “C” batteries in about a day and a half… not a very good use of our money. If you do need the convenience of battery-operated lights, then make sure they are LEDs.
Enjoy the ambience
If you’re like me, then you can’t get enough of the romantic soft glow of Holiday lights. As a matter of fact, I have a string in my office. My wife and I made a cute display using a few strings of lights on top of our kitchen cupboards, and they provide enough light that we can do just about everything without flipping the light switch. The electricity usage of string lights is so much less than overhead halogen bulbs that we can run the string lights for 19.2 hours for the cost of 1 hour of having the overhead lights on.
You can actually SAVE money by using your holiday lights in lieu of harsh overhead lighting. Sure there are less daylight hours, but that just means you get to enjoy the cozy feeling of your multi-colored blinking friends.
Get a timer
When you discover how much juice your holiday displays actually suck up, then you’ll quickly come to the conclusion that you can’t run them all day. Our modest outside display consumes over 600 watts (elaborate displays can use 2000W and more), and we don’t really want to go outside and unplug them. Some people hook them up to a lightswitch, but they are still very easy to forget about, especially when you’re tired. For this reason you should invest in a cheap timer. If you want to go high-tech then you can even get a light strip with a motion sensor so your tree lights up only when someone is in the room.
A mechanical timer is more durable and cheaper, but not as accurate
There are two types of electric timers: mechanical and digital. Mechanical devices usually have a dial with numbers and the dial turns once every day, just like a clock. The dial is surrounded by tabs (four tabs for each hour: one tab is 15 minutes), and you press down the tabs for the time you want your holiday lights on. This way you can turn your lights off and on different times of the day. Digital timers are more accurate but the cheap ones only allow you one Off and On slot, and are not programmable. More elaborate digital timers can be programmed and can different programs for different days. Most digital timers also use small watch batteries to keep their clocks and programs, but the cold outside can reduce their life.
I turn my lights on at 4:00pm (when it gets dark) and turn them off at 10:00. By doing this, I save $8.37 a day (or $251 a month). Still, even with this savings, the outside lights are costing us $83 alone. You can see how the investment of a $5 timer pays for itself in less than a day.
Outside lights are usually the brightest (and most expensive), but all of the indoor decorations accumulate, too. The indoor decorations may not seem like much, but when added together total 635 Watts, which is the same as the expensive outside lights! Without timers, running these for the entire month of December will cost $300 over our normal electricity bill. We live in one of the few states where electricity is cheap (7¢ / KWH) but the average is 12¢ and can be as high as 23¢!
A cheap digital timer. One program state and no grounded outlet
Based on these figures, you can see that you need some indoor timers, as well. These can range from $5 to $20, but the average should be about $10. It may suck to add an additional $40 to your holiday decoration budget, but the timers will pay for themselves very quickly, and you can reuse them next year. You may even find them useful throughout the year (like enforcing TV and video game curfew).
As mentioned in the opening paragraph: it’s what you don’t see that can kill you. By stretching your decoration budget a bit, you can assess your actual electricity costs, and manage it effectively so that it doesn’t cost you an arm and a leg. With the ability to measure you can make smarter choices in your holiday lights. I’m not interested in saving Mother Earth so much as keeping money in my wallet.
“Given the state of the economy”, why wouldn’t you?