Whether you dream of a 12-foot lit Christmas tree, a house iced in blue and white lights, or colored lights twinkling to a soundtrack – light decorations are a joyous way to illuminate the holiday season. But did you ever wonder what that means for your energy usage and bill?
We ran an experiment focused on the energy usage and the cost of two kinds of holiday lights:
- Non-LED Mini lights*
- Mini LED lights*By plugging the lights into a smart plug that’s connected to the DTE Insight app and Energy Bridge, we were able to discover their energy usage by-the-second.. The Energy Bridge receives real-time information from your electric smart meter so you can monitor and manage energy within the Insight app.
- Non-LED mini lights and LED mini lights on all day
- Now, let’s look at the difference when using LED mini lights. These lights consume dramatically less energy resulting in an increase of only $0.44 per month for each string of lights. That is a savings of 88% over non-LED lights! Let’s see how the savings change with the size of your tree:
- Let’s assume that you have a tree with non-LED mini lights that you leave on all the time. You could end up spending $3.82 per month for each string of lights. Now, considering that it takes 700 mini lights to fill a 7-foot tree, 1,000 for a 10-foot tree and as much as 2,000 for a 12-foot tree, the cost of lighting substantially increases – and who has more than one tree?!
|
|
kWh/Month Non-LED Mini Lights |
Cost/Month Non-LED Mini Lights |
kWH/Month LED Mini Lights |
Cost/Month LED Mini Lights |
|
7 ft. tree 700 lights |
206.15 kWh |
$26.79 |
23.87 kWh |
$3.10 |
|
10 ft. tree 1,000 lights |
294.5 kWh |
$38.28 |
34.1 kWh |
$4.43 |
|
12 ft. tree 2,000 lights |
589 kWh |
$76.57 |
68.2 kWh |
$8.86 |
But with Insight app and Energy Bridge you can control and automate your home . including adding your lights to your schedule. By setting Smart Actions within the app, you can automatically turn your lights on and off and reduce the amount of time they are consuming energy. By automating the lights to turn off at 8:00 am and turn on at 5:30 pm they were consuming 14.5 hours less per day and saved another 40% on electricity!
Non-LED Mini Lights and LED Mini Lights with an automated schedule
|
|
kWh/Month Non-LED Mini Lights |
Cost/Month Non-LED Mini Lights |
kWH/Month LED Mini Lights |
Cost/Month LED Mini Lights |
|
7 ft. tree 700 lights |
122.71 kWh |
$15.95 |
14.14 kWh |
$1.84 |
|
10 ft. tree 1,000 lights |
175.30 kWh |
$22.78 |
20.22 kWh |
$2.62 |
|
12 ft. tree 2,000 lights |
350.60 kWh |
$45.56 |
40.44 kWh |
$5.25 |
Holiday lights don’t have to use a lot of energy. By using LED lights and putting your lights on an automated schedule, you can reduce the cost of holiday lighting to have a minimal impact on your energy bill.
You can download the FREE DTE Insight app from the Apple and Google Play app stores to start monitoring your energy usage and saving on your energy bill today.
*National average price per kWh is $0.13.Data was collected throughout the month of December. Non-LED Mini lights and mini LED lights are sold as strings of 100.