We hear every year about the rising electricity costs associated with holiday decorations. I think just about every neighborhood in the U.S. now has one of those blocks with extreme holiday displays and a massive number of flashing and twinkling lights. Our family always enjoys driving around the most decorated areas where we live with the kids as part of our holiday tradition, but the amount of electricity these displays take is one reason we haven’t gone overboard on our own decorations.

The latest issue of Midwest Living has a short feature on “greening up” your holiday lights this year, and they’re not talking about the color of the light bulbs. The crucial piece of advice is to trade in your incandescent holiday lights for LED-based light sets. An average user will save $19 per year on energy costs by making the swap. But the more interesting statistic to me was that if just 20% of homes in the U.S. switched to using LED-based holiday lights, that would save enough energy to power 100,000 homes for an entire year!

Look Inside >> November/December 2008

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