esnagel
Wednesday, December 12th, 2007, 05:30 PM
My Christmas lights (http://www.netnagel.com/2007/12/2007-christmas-lights.html) this year are now “award-winning!” We won the Town of Tonawanda Paramedics Award for Best Classic Display for the 2007 Ken-Ton Energy Efficient Holiday Decorating Contest (try saying that in 1 breath)!
So what’s so energy efficient about my display?
<ul>The lights flash on and off to the music. On average, less than 1/3 of my lights are on at a time (if I have everything on, it uses about 1.6 Kw of energy… when it’s running, it stays at about 550 watts)
We only run the lights a few hours a night (3-4). Because of the speaker, I don’t want to disturb the neighbors too much. As I drive to the gym at 5:45 in the morning, I’m amazed at how many people just leave their lights on all night long.
The spotlight on my sign is an LED spotlight. That baby uses 1.5 watts / hr; my average cost of electricity is $0.15 / Kwh, so running it for an hour costs me $0.000225. Or, I can run it for nearly 45 hours and it’ll cost me $0.01.
All of the power in the house is provided by Green Mountain Energy Corporation (http://www.greenmountainenergy.com/). Currently, that’s 90% hydroelectric and 10% New Wind. (For comparison, the average mix of resources supplying New York includes: Natural Gas (22%), Nuclear (29%), Hydroelectric (18%), Coal (15%), Oil (14%), and Other (
So what’s so energy efficient about my display?
<ul>The lights flash on and off to the music. On average, less than 1/3 of my lights are on at a time (if I have everything on, it uses about 1.6 Kw of energy… when it’s running, it stays at about 550 watts)
We only run the lights a few hours a night (3-4). Because of the speaker, I don’t want to disturb the neighbors too much. As I drive to the gym at 5:45 in the morning, I’m amazed at how many people just leave their lights on all night long.
The spotlight on my sign is an LED spotlight. That baby uses 1.5 watts / hr; my average cost of electricity is $0.15 / Kwh, so running it for an hour costs me $0.000225. Or, I can run it for nearly 45 hours and it’ll cost me $0.01.
All of the power in the house is provided by Green Mountain Energy Corporation (http://www.greenmountainenergy.com/). Currently, that’s 90% hydroelectric and 10% New Wind. (For comparison, the average mix of resources supplying New York includes: Natural Gas (22%), Nuclear (29%), Hydroelectric (18%), Coal (15%), Oil (14%), and Other (