Christmas lights
 

Does any one have experience with LED christmas lights? As far as how they look on the house and tree. I noticed the power meter for the house was running high and tracked it down to the christmas lights. I had these strands for 6-7 years so they are not high tech. I'm using .7Kw to power the lights for the house and tree. I'll have to see about some energy star ones after the holidays when they go on sale. :)

They're lighting up the rocky center tree in NYC, so they can't be too ugly, :)

Man, that's a lot of power. It pays to be an atheist!

LED's are fine and dandy. Avoid the blue ones though. They do something funny to my eyes. (Seriously - they're very hard to look at, and I'm sure it's not just me.)

All of mine do that -- the blue one's are just more intense I think. It's the 60 cycle flicker... Unless your LED's are running on DC power :p Not sure which method is more efficient - on one hand, you have to convert over to DC -- on the other, the current limiting resistors get quite warm :/

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I have been using LED lights year round as accent lamps. I have had one blue bulb go out in two years (it just went out).

http://www.instructables.com/id/2-Watt-LED-Accent-Lamp/

I have a stand of LED lights and in my opinion they don't spread the light around enough to be appreciated. Its more of a focused beam so it looks like crap to me.

Now is the time to buy them, if there are any left at the store.

LEDs are very directional. You can sand them a little to get a more diffused light.

They take WAY less power than incandescent. The plain white ones often have a blue tint. It has to do with the dyes in how they are manufactured.

If you are interested, here are some photos of a light I got at Walmart and converted to a screw in plug for a can light:
http://web.mac.com/benhdvideoguy/iWeb/Home/LED.html

Bump

i got some led's last year and they were on my deck i did notice they were more durable than glass bulb incandecents so thats another perk

We finally ditched all the incandescent bulbs at my parents' house in the UK, in favour of LED ones.

One set just uses flat-faced LED's and the effect is good because they run against a white siding and light it up in triangles.

The others have a diffuser lens over them like more traditional lights and that seems to have been designed quite well that they still have that "twinkle".

Only thing that's slightly offputting is the control box does allsorts of fancy things like fade/chase but it's all done via pulse modulation, so when the LED's are "dim" they have a real short blip of light and a long pause, gives a somewhat ugly flicker. Why they can't use PWM to charge a smoothing capacitor I'll never know, but they are very good on electrics.

We also have a string of 16 yellow LED's that are powered off 4 "AA" batteries which go around the bookcase, and those stay on solidly and the batteries last about four days. It again pulses the bulbs in sequence (seems 8 are wired positive, 8 negative) and the box puts out an AC square wave. This appears to save power somehow.

--Phil

I've used solar LED crazysales chrsitmas lights for years. They are great, not shimmering annoyingly. Very easy to set them up, and the conductivity is good which leads every single bulb ligtened. Also when I bought them they were in 44% off discount. What a grea deal. They are powered by solar energy, so they save me more money in a manner.

Solar lights suck. They're never bright enough, or stay on long enough. Then the batteries loose capacity and finally die after 3 years. Solar accent lighting will never save you money in the long run because the cost of the solar panels exceed the value of the very low power consumption.

The right way to power LEDs is DC, but the results with household AC are fine.

Solar lights are DC powered- every set I've had has been loaded with rechargeable AAs in them. If they suck it's becuse of the cheapo battery they supplied or an undersized panel. The 70 foot string of multicolored on my back deck is still going strong when I get up in the morning, maybe China's shipping higher quality stuff these days.

I've got a set of multicolored and a set of white (both LED) on switched outlets in my basement, it's a very nice effect. There's a shorter set of non-solar multicolored ones on a fake tree down there, powered by three AAs. I hate using them because I hate a permanent install that uses disposable batteries and am too lazy to cycle rechargeables through it. I can't wire it in because it's too close to the hot tub- the damn nanny state doesn't want electricity that close to water.

My wife suggested putting a solar set on the tree and putting the panel outside. I'm thinking about soldering a couple 2 wire automotive connectors together and running them through a length of PVC then filling the pipe with spray foam. Drill a hole in the wall, plug it with the connector pipe, then mount the panel outside and plug it in to the connector. Inside, wire the solar light set to the connector pipe and Bingo: the AA battery gets its solar charge while being protected from the below zero temps that we get in the winter, the house is still sealed and I have the lighting I want without having 110v running loose near the hot tub or changing batteries all the time.

I've been using LEDs the last 5 years (Costco warm white strands with a plastic covering shaped like traditional mini lights covered with cut in crosshatching).

The light is brighter than the old incandescents we had. After 5 years, no bulbs have burnt, and the light is nicely distributed. Plus they take practically no power (40 watts/100 for the incandescents, 7 watts/100 for the LEDs).

What's not to like? It's pretty much the task LEDs were designed for :).

Sam