Energy-saving LED holiday lights are catching on

If your inner Al Gore is worried that your Christmas lights might not be green enough, you're apparently not alone. At area Home Depots there's been such a run on energy-saving LED (light-emitting-diode) holiday lights that some stores are sold out.

That's good news to the Electric Power Research Institute, which estimates that if every "seasonal mini-light" in America were replaced with a light-emitting-diode (LED), it would add up to a $250 million savings and a 400,000-ton reduction in carbon emissions.

The Times Square New Year's Eve ball is now totally LED, the Institute reports. So are the 30,000 lights on Rockefeller Center's 84-foot-tall spruce. The Maine Public Utilities Commission and Minnesota Power are offering rebates and coupons for folks who buy LED holiday lights.

Closer to home, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is testing LEDs in some of its Christmas lights on Temple Square, according to church spokesman Scott Trotter.

But, while conservation is important, Christmas lighting "is not a significant issue," says Rocky Mountain Power communications director Dave Eskelsen. "It wouldn't make a large difference if everybody decided not to do holiday lighting. We'd still need the power plants we say we need."

As for Marty Slack and the 100,000-light Christmas display at his house in Murray, it's all still your garden-variety incandescent. But once he can get a decent price on LEDs, he says, he plans to switch over. In the meantime, because he synchronizes his lights to music, lighting up only small sections of his yard at one time, he actually uses less energy now than he did several years ago when he had fewer lights but they were all on at once, he says.

At $5.99, it costs almost twice as much to buy a 100-light strand of LEDs than a strand of conventional bulbs. On the other hand, the LEDs rarely wear out, use 98 percent less electricity, are less likely to overload a circuit, and generate less heat so are safer on Christmas trees, according to the Electric Power Research Institute.

"The electricity cost to light a holiday tree with LEDs is 13 to 17 cents per season," compared to $6 to $10 dollars for incandescent lights, according to the Institute.

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E-mail: jarvik@desnews.com