Tech-Savvy Solutions for Elevated Holiday Decorations
Light up your holiday decorations with efficiency and ease using these innovative tech tips.
ProblemSolved, USA TODAY
If you need a reason to economize as you plan a holiday light display that outshines the sun, consider these inconvenient truths:
Our holiday lights burn so bright, you can see them from space. Americans use more energy to power their holiday lights, by one estimate, than the nation of El Salvador uses for everything in a whole year. The juice that animates our 15-foot, inflatable blinking Rudolphs and our 20-foot, 1,200-bulb flagpole trees could cool 14 million refrigerators.
Many Americans – and some entire neighborhoods – are expending more energy than ever on their holiday yard displays: Staging them earlier, running them later and leaving no patch of turf unilluminated.
“People start decorating, like, right after Halloween now,” said Bianca Soriano, a spokesperson for Florida Power and Light.
How Much Power Are You Using?
There’s a formula for that
The average household spent an estimated $16.48 powering holiday lights in 2022, nearly two dollars more than in 2021, according to an analysis by the Today’s Homeowner website.
There are ways to predict those costs. Kiplinger, the personal finance site, offers a wonderfully geeky formula to calculate a holiday power bill:
[wattage/1000 x time in hours] x cost per kWh in cents = cost to run Christmas lights
If you switch to energy-efficient LED bulbs, the same month-long display will cost only $9. And if you downsize to Mini-LED bulbs, the cost drops to 60 cents.
Go LED
The big takeaway here is to go LED. LED bulbs use at least 75% less energy and last up to 25 times longer than old-school incandescent lights.
Here are more energy-saving tips.
- Don’t be in such a hurry to put up your holiday display
- Consider solar power
- Put your holiday lights on a timer
- Rethink that inflatable Santa
- Beware of phantom power
Turn the lights off if you leave town, and set a New Year’s resolution to take the lights down in a timely manner.
