The Energy Cost of Christmas Lights

Milk and cookies aren't the only things being consumed during the Christmas holiday season.

With a majority of Americans putting up some type of Christmas lighting inside and outside of their home, the energy industry sees a major upward shift in residential and commercial energy consumption during the month of December. It's the magical feeling that Christmas lights bring to our home, community, and city each year, but it doesn't come without a cost.

In an article from Forbes.com, the energy company Arcadia decided to do a study on the impact of Christmas lights on consumers' energy usage and the energy industry with those consumers using traditional lighting, which is categorized as a home using nine 20-ft strings of 100 incandescent bulbs, with each string using 40W of electricity. Their findings show that the impact of Christmas lights on the national power grid is more than most would have expected.



• The average household is estimated to have Christmas lights on for 6 hours a day, resulting in an average of 65 kWh of electricity in December.
• Of course, if you're one of those households that go all-out on a Christmas light show, your average would be quite higher.
• Arcadia estimated that the combined households in America with Christmas lights would consume around 3.5 billion kWh in the month of December.
• An estimated total for that increase of energy consumption due to Christmas lights costs Americans $645 million in energy expenses.
• That's an average of a $12 increase on a residential electric bill and up to a $20 increase on a residential electric bill in California.
• Powering those Christmas lights is not the "greenest" way of power usage either as that 3.5 billion kWhs emits about 2 million tons of Co2 into the atmosphere.

It's hard to imagine these numbers when the lights are usually only up for a month. If you're a person who loves Christmas and the feeling of joy you get looking at your home, lit up in an aura of colorful light, there's a sensible way to keep with tradition and lower your energy consumption. 

According to the Department of Energy, if you convert all your traditional lights to LED bulbs, the amount of power you'll be using to light up your house and that Christmas tree in the living room will be drastically reduced. In fact, it only costs $0.27 to light a 6-foot tree for 12 hours a day for 40 days with LEDs compared to $10 for incandescent lights. For commercial real estate, not only are LED Christmas lights going to save you money, but a full LED conversion of your parking lot or interior building lights isn't a bad idea either and Ananta can help with that.

We hope your home shines bright, your energy bill stays low, and the rest of your December is filled with love, laughter, and joy. From all of us at Ananta, Merry Christmas!