Holiday Lights Low Concern For Northwest Power Producers

This morning, KPLU aired a piece on the power consumption of holiday lights. The BPA says that holiday lights count for less than 1/2 of 1% of energy consumed by BPA customers. That’s really not that much. But, we can do better. According to the folks over at ENERGY STAR, compliant lights use 75% less energy than traditional lights (and, my personal opinion – they’re easier to install because you can string many, many more in serial).

Granted, there are also several other great benefits too: the run cooler, they last longer, you can shake them up a bit more while installing them, and they might even be a bit brighter.

We installed LEDs this year for the first time (I wanted to make sure the old ones had sufficiently worn out before I dealt with the disposal issues). I won’t go back. Now, it’s time to work out a Hohm plug-in for the energy modeler that can calculate my savings.