Bulletin E-Edition:
LEDs brighten more of our trees
By Kate Ramsayer / The Bulletin
Last modified: November 29. 2009 6:32AM PST
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Tubular Skylights employees Dave Engeman, top, and Kurt Lowre hang a string of LED Christmas lights last week while getting a Bend house ready for the holidays.
Pete Erickson / The Bulletin
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The tree, wreath and holly are not the only options for green decorations this year. Many homes will be brightened this season with energy-efficient holiday lights.
Strings of light-emitting diodes might be a little more expensive, but the lights last longer and use significantly less energy than their conventional incandescent cousins.
“You pay a little bit more initially, but then you're not paying as much to run them,” said Kathleen Christian, with Ace Hardware & Paint in Bend. “We're starting to sell a lot of them. People are really thinking about energy efficiency.”
Her favorites are the tiny button LED holiday lights, she said. But the bulbs come in a variety of colors, sizes and configurations, with strands, icicles, nets and even snowflake-shaped options.
“Whereas three or four years ago, you could only get one style and one color (of LEDs), now they have icicles, ones that are round, ones that look like a traditional bulb,” said Kathryn Gallagher, a California-based spokeswoman for The Home Depot. Nationwide last year, the chain sold 40,000 miles worth of LED holiday lights. “There's a lot more variety now than there ever has been, and that's a response to the enormous popularity.”
Earlier this month, a Home Depot promotion encouraged customers to bring in old strings of incandescent lights to receive credit toward the purchase of new LEDs.
The campaign was so popular, Gallagher said, that some stores temporarily sold out of the LEDs.
“Energy efficiency, I would say, is something that we'll continue to see increasing in popularity,” Gallagher said.
LED holiday lights can use 90 percent less energy than regular incandescent lights, according to the U.S. Department of Energy's Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy program. And that can translate to significant savings.
Draping a tree with 125 standard C-7 bulbs could cost $25.13 in electricity, running it 12 hours a day for 40 days, according to the program. Using 300 mini-lights with incandescent bulbs adds $6.03 to the power bill.
But decorating a tree with 280 LED holiday lights will cost a mere 56 cents.
LED lights can last for about 20,000 hours, according to the federal energy program, and decorators can string together multiple strands without fear of blowing a fuse. If every household in the United States switched to LED holiday lights, the electricity savings would amount to $410 million, the Department of Energy estimates.
Brennan Morrow, owner of the Bend company Lights R Us, said the waste of energy associated with incandescent lights led him to look at other options.
“During the holiday season, I'd get a little fired up because, being a very green-minded person, the use of regular lights is a huge load on the system,” he said.
His company designs and puts up holiday light displays for local residences and businesses, and it uses only LED lights.
LEDs are “darn near indestructible,” Morrow said, and are cool to the touch as well. They work even if one bulb on a strand burns out, he said. And because they last longer, Morrow added, they don't need to be replaced every November.
“Lights don't get thrown away each year, and the waste is significantly less,” he said.
Cent-wise True Value and Sporting Goods in Redmond is carrying LED lights this year for the first time, said Shawna Williams, a supervisor with the store. At her store, the lights had been on sale at the same price for both LED and incandescent holiday lights.
At Home Depot's Web site, a string of faceted LED mini-lights on a spool is about $25. For $1 less, customers can get two strands of 300 incandescent lights, also on a spool.
At Fred Meyer, LED lights sell for between $7.99 and $24.99, depending on the size and style, said Amanda Ip, project coordinator with the store. And even though prices can be higher for LEDs, they can be more cost-effective because they last longer, she said, noting that the one drawback is that the store does not sell replacement bulbs. But customers are making the switch to LED icicles, nets and strands of lights.
“The LED lights are actually selling better than the regular bulbs,” Ip said.
Kate Ramsayer can be reached at 541-617-7811 or at kramsayer@bendbulletin.com.
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