LED Christmas lighting is cool — literally.
I hope you’ve all bought LED lighting for your trees — they are much more efficient and safer, too, because they generate less heat! We have, and so has the White House and Rockefeller Center (see below).
Here is an Electric Power Research Institute fact sheet to answer all your questions on LED vs conventional Christmas lights.
Happy Holidays!
UPDATE: This post does not mean I am done blogging for the year….
December 21st, 2007 at 1:58 pm
I’ve got mine. I’m very excited about them, as they look completely amazing. It might just be me, but they seem more durable too, which is lovely.
December 21st, 2007 at 2:55 pm
My new favorite science geek toy is a little hand-held infrared thermometer (a science teacher friend turned me on to it - apparently I am of the same intellect and inclination as his students - compliment?). My new LED Christmas lights are literally no warmer than the tree itself. I can detect zero heat. Indeed, they’re cool. I like the look better than the old lights, too. They seem crisper.
December 21st, 2007 at 3:00 pm
What world wide agency mandated these? What? Somebody just came up with these without government intervention?
December 21st, 2007 at 4:16 pm
Infrared thermometer (mine is an Extech Pocket IR, good enough): indispensable for checking out air leaks, insulation weaknesses.
Another related, relevant item is a Kill-o-Watt, Watts up, etc electric meter.
[Plug into wall, plug something else into it. Gives instantaneous wattage, or run over days and see total accumulated.]
1) Measure.
2) Tune, fixing lots of small issues.
This is one of the ways in which computer performance was increased, same applies to energy efficiency. It is long-established that human intuition about suchthigns is pretty bad, which is why one has to measure.
December 21st, 2007 at 7:22 pm
I certainly can understand all the interest, but I’ll keep my money in my pocket for now and use the old bulbs. I buy the LEDs when they are sold for my more used and commoner lighting needs like living room, desk, cars, etc. My christmas lights aren’t on enough to make the difference.
When the LEDs are out for everything else, I’ll snap them up.