Here's how much 49,000 LEDs saves off your electric bill

[ChuckHutchings]

Joseph Ayo wrote:

Well one thing about Floridians.... I am included and so is Jeff.... The weather is warm... we hang outside in shorts and flip flops watching not only our own displays but greeting the hords of people that come to see our displays.

You get told how your display is awesome (a natural because its animated) and how its the best they ever seen. Night after night of hearing how you have the best thing in town DOES inflate your ego and our enthusiasms reflect in some way or another when we talk about our displays.

Just guys understand that egos run quite high in Florida.

Agreed. But I think it is in poor taste to disclose details of your personal financial transactions here,

Quite frankly, I couldn't care less HOW much money people make off their "Put" options. That was tacky, to say the least. When you combine this with other comments like "Money is no object when it comes to my candy cane dispenser" then a lot of people kind of gag at that.

I mean this as constructive criticism since I, too, have been accused of being a little too braggardly around here.

I agreed with that assessment so you'll only see me use the word "awesome" when I'm referring to something so blatantly stupid that the parody is obvious to all.

Just my opinion.

Edit: I meant I only use the word "awesome" when referring to stupid stuff that I'VE done. If I say YOUR display looks "Awesome" then I really mean it.

[David Balch]

Trepidati0n wrote:

A 100 count string of normal mini's is about 0.33 Amps. A fairly high price for electricity is $0.15/(kW*Hr).

Therefore the price to run 10,000 lights for 1 hour is

(0.33 Amps/100 lights) * 10,000 lights * 120V * (1kW/1000W) * $0.15/(kW*Hr) = $0.60/hour

LED's lights (if full wave) consume about 20% of that or $0.12. However, for sake of the argument, lets assume LED's use no power. Also lets assume that people are pretty good shoppers and they only pay $5.00 per 100 count mini LED and $1 for 100 count regular minis. Also assume that a string of regulars lasts 2 years while LED's would be 4 years. Therefore the real cost difference between the two for 10,000 ligts would be

($5/100 count LED) * 10,000 count - 2*($1/100 count mini) * 10,000 count = $300.

Therefore in order to make back the cost of LED's, you would have to run them for 500 hours ($300/($0.60/hour)). Now if you run your display for 5 hours a day for 45 days that is 225 hours. Therefore it would take you over 2 years to pay off the LED's. Now, this is all predicated putting everything in the best "light" for LED's.

If you run with more "real numbers" and go for $1/100 count regular mini and $10/100 count LED and ALSO realize that with animation your lights are only on maybe on 50% of the time, it would now be nearly 2000 hours for payback!

So in terms of total operating cost, LED's IMO are not a good thing.

HOWEVER,

LED's in terms of color/intensity are quite awesome. Therefore when buying LED's, don't fool yourself in terms of money saved...look at them in terms of what they will do for your display and see if that is worth it to you.

Also, LED's become quite valuable if you don't want to upgrade your house service (if you have a house with natural gas, you might have a 100 Amp service). It will also allow you to need fewer outlets. Again money saved.

You are not taking into account how this saves some people from NOT having to upgrade their electric feed which could cost between $500 & in my case over $2500

So the payback is 1 season

[ChuckHutchings]

David Balch wrote:

You are not taking into account how this saves some people from NOT having to upgrade their electric feed which could cost between $500 & in my case over $2500

So the payback is 1 season

He did address that. Look at his last paragraph. (He just didn't explicitly put a quantifiable value on it.)

[David Balch]

I can never get past the 5th line.....:laughing:

[jeffostroff]

A lot of people tend to focus on the bad side of LEDs and point out why it's financially not a god idea. I'm not doing it because it's directly financially a better solution. I do it for the other side effect benefits.

Well let me just say thatfrom the viewpoint ofmany of the people driving by most of our Christmas displays, the amount of of time and money all of us spend on our diplays is not worth the money!

Anyway, the 2 main reasons for me using the LEDs is visual colors, and reducing my carbon footprint. Trepidati0n you can do all the fancy formulas you want, but to me the only formula I need is this very simple formula:

1/5.

That's how much power LEDs consumes compared to a regular bulb.

That's how my carbon footprint is compared to a regular bulb.

That's how little money I'm giving to OPEC compared to a regular bulb.

That's how much more I'm contributing to our oil reserves, so that when they announce oil inventories on CNBC that we have more oil than expected, and stocks shoot up, I can grin, knowing that I contributed to that and made a difference. Amen. Let us pray....

[Dale W]

I can't tell how much our lights cost us to operate because our December Bill was so much less than the November/January Bill. Our lights cost us a -$75 a month! :laughing::laughing::laughing:

We were about 70% LEDs on 176 channels and one inflatable 24/7.

[RichardH]

My bill for December was $110 more than November and I ran 100% incandescent lights which was about 45,000 lights. I spent about $700 for two subpanels and 17 GFI circuits that I installed myself.

Even though I love full-wave LEDs and would be happy to switch, reality is that if I used LEDs, my display would have to be much smaller to stay in my budget.

What was really cool this year is my visitors donated more to the Make-A-Wish foundation than the cost of my entire display plus power.

[jeffostroff]

Wow, richard you saved a bundle doing it yourself. That's about $5000 to have a licensed electrician do that. A few years back, we had spent $300 jus thaving 6 outlets run out to the yard, and a few extra switches in th epanel, and a generator port.

[Joseph Ayo]

jeffostroff wrote:

1/5.

That's how much power LEDs consumes compared to a regular bulb.

That's how my carbon footprint is compared to a regular bulb.

That's how little money I'm giving to OPEC compared to a regular bulb.

I hate to say it but we had discussions here and there have also been discussions on gassaver.org about these differences and here is food for thought.

There have been some discussions about CFL's, compact flourescent lights in other words. There are energy saving lights however something to think about is how much energy something requires to be made to begin with, the embedded manufacturing energy needed.

For example the more expensive something is, generally this is reflected in the increased energy required to make it. I am not sure about LED's but the case with CFL's is CFL's are considered to be more energy saving when LED's because they can produce overall brighter light with a similar 70% savings over incandescent, however they require 400% more energy to be manufactured then an incandescent bulb. So a CFL doesnt get ahead an actually begin saving on the carbon foot print until they have been in use for over 20 months out of their 60 month expected life span.

With LED's I suspect their solid poured bulb shape can mean they require much more energy to be manufactured then their incandescent counterparts. The 5 MM have less "plastic" mass and would use much less energy then say a strawberry shape or C6 bulb shape. The additional energy required to manufacture the LED might possibly require the first 2 seasons of energy savings in electricity before they begin to save energy and choosing 5mm (smaller concave bulb shape with less plastic weight) would save much more energy then the M5, strawberry, C6, etc type LEDs.

[Martha Kleder]

"my self promoting nature had 1/2 of the planetchristmas world thinking I was an egotistical nerd"

Make that half plus one.

[Mary Jayne]

Joseph Ayo wrote:

For example the more expensive something is, generally this is reflected in the increased energy required to make it. I am not sure about LED's

With LED's I suspect their solid poured bulb shape can mean they require much more energy to be manufactured then their incandescent counterparts. The 5 MM have less "plastic" mass and would use much less energy then say a strawberry shape or C6 bulb shape. The additional energy required to manufacture the LED might possibly require the first 2 seasons of energy savings in electricity before they begin to save energy and choosing 5mm (smaller concave bulb shape with less plastic weight) would save much more energy then the M5, strawberry, C6, etc type LEDs.

You are not sure, you suspect, might possibly...in other words this is all your own opinion (once again)and nothing actually factual. Instead of giving us your ideas Joe, why don't you do a little research and seeif you can find out the truth for us.

[ChuckHutchings]

I thought higher prices meant higher demand and/or lower supply.

Also, remember that the manufacturers know that we won't be buying LEDs in the same manner we bought minis (ie. as essentially disposable decorations) but we'll only replace them every 5 or, hopefully, more years.

[Joseph Ayo]

Mary Jayne wrote:

Joseph Ayo wrote:

You are not sure, you suspect, might possibly...in other words this is all your own opinion (once again)and nothing actually factual. Instead of giving us your ideas Joe, why don't you do a little research and seeif you can find out the truth for us.

http://healthandenergy.com/ethanol.htm

Is one concept and there are many arguements that ethanol for example does not save money, some cases costs more... I cannot find anything on LED except some articles that it costs more in carbon foot print to make plastic items over glass. The CFL had a lot of discussion about how the CFL cost substantially more energy during manufacturing but thats not to say the overall carbon foot print will be less in the end. Its true like the ethanol story above most energy efficient products cost more to manufacture and of course in these products you have export the polution to the manufacturing plant rather then your local electric company but when looking at overall carbon foot print, the picture isnt always so pretty as simply spending more and saving energy. As with CFL's the carbon foot print is bigger during manufacturing but eventually there is a net savings and LED's hold a great potential. What I was saying was howmuch time used burning the LED's before you reach the point where the carbon foot print is truely at a savings to the atmosphere?

[thyno z]

who cares about the carbon foot print. thats all a bunch of whooie if you ask me.

[ChuckHutchings]

You must be over 50.

Edit: To argue about whether "this" or "that" has a greater impact on the environment is just fine.

But to stick your head in the sand and deny its effect is the ultimate "hooey".

It funny how people reach a certain age and then figure "It's not my problem anymore." Just because you will most likely not live to see the effects of your actions doesn't relieve you of the responsibility for those actions.

I'll stop now. But try to keep your mind as open as it was 30 years ago.

[Mary Jayne]

Joseph Ayo wrote:

What I was saying was howmuch time used burning the LED's before you reach the point where the carbon foot print is truely at a savings to the atmosphere?

I know what you meant...I am not a complete moron.

The problem I am having is that it was all opinion and no fact.

People (like me)using LEDs are using themfora few reasons and one is that they want to save on electric...which is what started this thread...and some are concerned abouttheir personal effect on the environment. We realize thecost, over years...is what will equal the savings andif we don't get x amount ofyears out of LEDs, then the savings aren't there.

So you putyour ideas out there as food for thought...which in a way is good as people get talking about this...but everyone has opinions...sometimes we need a few facts in with those opinions. So does it cost more to produce the LEDs overincandescents...right now...youare saying you don't know...so how is that helping me...it isn't.It is just another thing to figure into the LED equation and that just makes me want to bang my head against the wall.

[Mary Jayne]

ChuckHutchings wrote:

You must be over 50.

Edit: To argue about whether "this" or "that" has a greater impact on the environment is just fine.

But to stick your head in the sand and deny its effect is the ultimate "hooey".

It funny how people reach a certain age and then figure "It's not my problem anymore." Just because you will most likely not live to see the effects of your actions doesn't relieve you of the responsibility for those actions.

I'll stop now. But try to keep your mind as open as it was 30 years ago.

And you are saying that certain age is over 50...hmmm...there are a few of us over 50s here who would beg to differ with your opinion of at what age one sticks their head in the sand.

[ChuckHutchings]

I was just making an observation.

In my opinion, there is some point in a person's life where they become the crotchety old man on the porch rocking chair that just says "Bah! Back when I was a kid we never had no <whatever it is>!"

Some people reach that point at different ages but I think 50 is a good average.

[Joseph Ayo]

ChuckHutchings wrote:

You must be over 50.

Edit: To argue about whether "this" or "that" has a greater impact on the environment is just fine.

But to stick your head in the sand and deny its effect is the ultimate "hooey".

It funny how people reach a certain age and then figure "It's not my problem anymore." Just because you will most likely not live to see the effects of your actions doesn't relieve you of the responsibility for those actions.

I'll stop now. But try to keep your mind as open as it was 30 years ago.

I suspect we go thru environmentalism fatigue periodically. When I was first grade in the early 70's there was the first big environmentalism movement. Everyone was afraid of soaps that werent biodegradable, we saw the pictures of rivers that looked like a Mr Bubble bubble bath. We also were afraid of the world being overtaken by trash laying everywhere along the roadways so some states inacted a deposit/return on all soda and in some cases beer cans and bottles. Reality is aluminum is the best recycled product. Recycled paper causes more airand water polutionas well asincreased energy coststhen growing more trees to make fresh paper.

Now people are backing ethanol only to learn its more costly to the environment and the wallet unless we can use food waste for ethanol stock as opposed to taking food off the dinner table to make gas out of.

Now growing number of scientists are suggesting CFL's are not what they are cracked up to be and if we dont get a CFL recycle and recovery program, we are spreading mercury contamination from them all over the nation and into more and more drinking water.

Now some new article on MSN says making a hybrid vehicle costs more air polution during manufacture then it would recover in its first 60,000 miles of driving as compared to a non-hybrid.

The bright side is, environmental LEAD which was a big problem with leaded gas has declined 98%, most bays, rivers, oceanfronts and streams in the USA are at the cleanest levels they have been in over 50 yrs and a few articles in MSN say the ozone hole is smaller and now new catch phrase has entered the picture - global dimming due to increasing ozone at the equator is diminishing UV penetration at ground level.

[Mary Jayne]

Well then since I am over average...guess I should just get out the old rocking chair.

Thyno want to join me on the porch?

[thyno z]

actually, im not over 50. im right on it. 30 years ago "they" told us we were on the verge of running out of oil. 20 years ago "they" told us we were on the verge of another ice age. now, "they" tell us that we're going to bake ourselves alive or drown from the melting of the polar caps, or some such non-sense. my head is very much out of the sand. im smart enough to know when im being had and when im not. its all a bunch of, hmmmmmmmm, how can i put this in a family friendly way.......... AH ! its all el toro pooh-pooh and al gore is the top pooh-pooh !

ChuckHutchings wrote:

You must be over 50.

Edit: To argue about whether "this" or "that" has a greater impact on the environment is just fine.

But to stick your head in the sand and deny its effect is the ultimate "hooey".

It funny how people reach a certain age and then figure "It's not my problem anymore." Just because you will most likely not live to see the effects of your actions doesn't relieve you of the responsibility for those actions.

I'll stop now. But try to keep your mind as open as it was 30 years ago.

[thyno z]

and when i was a kid, i remember being shown movies about what to do in case of a nuclear attack. somehow, maybe it was with age or maybe, just maybe, my common sense told me that after seeing the atomic explosion in a movie, and all the destruction that followed with it, that the best way for me to protect myself was to get under my desk. i guess the next thing i should have believed was that i could protect myself from a terrorist bio attack was to tape my windows with duct tape !! like i said, my head is firmly out of the sand...........

Joseph Ayo wrote:

ChuckHutchings wrote:

I suspect we go thru environmentalism fatigue periodically. When I was first grade in the early 70's there was the first big environmentalism movement. Everyone was afraid of soaps that werent biodegradable, we saw the pictures of rivers that looked like a Mr Bubble bubble bath. We also were afraid of the world being overtaken by trash laying everywhere along the roadways so some states inacted a deposit/return on all soda and in some cases beer cans and bottles. Reality is aluminum is the best recycled product. Recycled paper causes more airand water polutionas well asincreased energy coststhen growing more trees to make fresh paper.

Now people are backing ethanol only to learn its more costly to the environment and the wallet unless we can use food waste for ethanol stock as opposed to taking food off the dinner table to make gas out of.

Now growing number of scientists are suggesting CFL's are not what they are cracked up to be and if we dont get a CFL recycle and recovery program, we are spreading mercury contamination from them all over the nation and into more and more drinking water.

Now some new article on MSN says making a hybrid vehicle costs more air polution during manufacture then it would recover in its first 60,000 miles of driving as compared to a non-hybrid.

The bright side is, environmental LEAD which was a big problem with leaded gas has declined 98%, most bays, rivers, oceanfronts and streams in the USA are at the cleanest levels they have been in over 50 yrs and a few articles in MSN say the ozone hole is smaller and now new catch phrase has entered the picture - global dimming due to increasing ozone at the equator is diminishing UV penetration at ground level.

[ChuckHutchings]

Thyno,

Thanks for adding the reasoning behind your opinion. Personally, I agree with much of your logic, just not your conclusion.

War Eagle.

[thyno z]

wisdom comes with age.

ChuckHutchings wrote:

I was just making an observation.

In my opinion, there is some point in a person's life where they become the crotchety old man on the porch rocking chair that just says "Bah! Back when I was a kid we never had no <whatever it is>!"

Some people reach that point at different ages but I think 50 is a good average.

[thyno z]

SURE mj !! and when they come to us talking their non-sense, we'll climb down off that porch and run circles around those smarter, younger people ! :laughing:

Mary Jayne wrote:

Well then since I am over average...guess I should just get out the old rocking chair.

Thyno want to join me on the porch?