December 16, 2009

How Much Does the Electricity to run Christmas Lights Cost?

Last year I talked about some ways that you can save on electricity costs on your Christmas Lights.

This year I decided to measure and find out exactly how much electricity my own Christmas lights use. I've got a simple string of the icicle style Christmas lights up decorating our house right now. I've had them setup on a Kill-a-Watt meter to see how much electricity they use. The lights are setup to turn on and off with a mechanical timer.

The string is using 72 W of power. The meter is showing 8.07 kWh of total usage. The meters timer shows its been running for 387 hours total which is 16 days and 3 hours. I have a timer setup to turn the lights on sometime around 5pm and then shut them down around 11pm (give or take). The lights are on about 6-7 hours a day. Its a mechanical style of timer so the times aren't super exact.

So in about 16 days I've used a hair over 8 kWh of power. That works out to 0.5 kWh per day of operation. My electricity is about 10¢ per kWh.

So the bottom line is :

1 day of operation costs 5¢ in electricity.

The whole Christmas season will cost me around $1.50.


Photo by antony_mayfield

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