LEDs are lighting up holidays for pennies

Mary Hayes knows a bargain when she sees one.

Last year at a post-holiday sale, she purchased hundreds of LED lights at Gertens, a landscape and nursery store, and last weekend she was installing them instead of traditional bulbs in her Inver Grove Heights front yard.

"I'm like a little kid," said Hayes of her fondness for outdoor decorations. "I love it and I'll keep doing it."

LED (light-emitting diode) technology has been around for several years, but it's hitting store shelves big-time this season with more products and flashier displays. With no filaments that produce heat, LED lights use 80 to 95 percent less electricity than traditional bulbs.

That can translate into hundreds of dollars in electricity savings for families and communities that use thousands of bulbs to illuminate their homes, trees, and all manner of Santas, reindeer and religious images.

Even homes that limit their lighting to a single tree can save significantly, according to Phil Smith, energy specialist in Minnesota's Office of Energy Security. Assuming that a household has 500 bulbs on a tree, burning them five hours a day for 30 days would cost $24 in electricity for standard C-7 bulbs, $2.40 for mini-lights and 24 cents for LEDs, Smith said.

What has kept LED lights from widespread adoption is the initial price, which can be two to three times higher than that of standard bulbs. The savings in electricity, however, will often compensate, with a payback in about three years. Some electric utilities offer rebates for LEDs if customers turn in old lights.

Last 10 to 20 times longer

Al Poser, an electrical contractor in Little Falls, Minn., likes LEDs for a different reason.

"You can drop them from six feet high onto concrete and they just bounce," he said. Because the bulbs produce no heat, he added, they can be coated with plastics that make them virtually indestructible. They also last 10 to 20 times longer than traditional bulbs, according to manufacturers.

Poser and others replaced nearly 12,000 standard bulbs with LEDs last summer in Little Falls. The lights illuminate 53 downtown buildings and streets during the holidays. Minnesota Power helped defray the cost with a $17,000 rebate. Utility officials estimated that the switch will save the community $5,000 a year in energy costs and $2,000 in maintenance, and that the savings will pay for the longer-lasting LEDs in 31/2 years.

"We're all kind of going green and thinking about our environment, and we need to make our dollars go a little further, so it seemed like a great fit for us," said Gina Vetter, project and volunteer coordinator for the Little Falls Chamber of Commerce.

In St. Paul, the city's 85-foot tree in Rice Park near the Landmark Center this year will use 40,000 LED lights, donated by Xcel Energy, instead of the 60,000 conventional bulbs strung last year, said Anne Hunt, sustainability coordinator in the mayor's office. Hunt said St. Paul, Minneapolis and other cities have also converted hundreds of traffic signals to LED lights, and will eventually use more of them in street lamps.

The tree outside the White House in Washington converted to LED lights last year.

Not everyone is thrilled with LED lights.

They each contain a small computer chip that converts electricity to light, but that light is focused, intense and, currently, limited to a handful of colors. Some find the quality of LED lights to be harsh, with a bluish tint, and prefer the softer illumination of incandescent bulbs. LED companies have heard those concerns, and are introducing "soft white" lights, multifaceted bulbs that diffuse the focused light, and more colors.

Jane Nolan hauls a 24-foot tree every year into the two-story vaulted great room in her home near Aitkin, Minn. She switched to LEDs last year and has mixed feelings about the results.

On the positive side, the LED lights are not a fire hazard because they produce no heat, she said, and electricity costs are certainly less.

But Nolan isn't satisfied with how the new lights perform. "They're bright to look at, but they don't cast off any light," she said. "You can have ornaments right beside them, but they don't light them up."

Nolan said some companies make solar-powered LED lights to illuminate outdoor walkways and steps, and she's waiting for the day when she can buy a solar-powered LED system for her indoor tree.

That kind of system is already in place at Rockefeller Center in New York, where the huge annual holiday tree switched to LED lights last year, powered in part by solar panels.

Librarian Roberta Hovde contributed to this report.

Tom Meersman • 612-673-7388