I've never been able to find out the power consumption of our Christmas lights, so I finally went out on this mild day with a ladder and a clip-on ammeter, and measured the current draw.
Our modest display comprises six strings of multi-coloured LED icicle lights.
I used a timer for years, but found that a short outage required a reset. Much easier to leave the lights on full-time. And we're down to only eight hours of daylight anyway.
So, I was curious as to how much this was costing. I turn them on the evening of the 1st Sunday in Advent, and let them run through the 12 days of Christmas, so into the first week of January. Call it six weeks in all.
The current draw was 0.13 A, so the power consumption is approximately 16 W. Sixteen W x 24 hours = (approximately) 400 W-hrs = 0.4 kW-hr
At $0.10 per kW-hr here, that's $0.04 per day = $0.28 per week = about $1.70 over the six weeks I run the lights.
Better go back to the timer!
Our modest display comprises six strings of multi-coloured LED icicle lights.
I used a timer for years, but found that a short outage required a reset. Much easier to leave the lights on full-time. And we're down to only eight hours of daylight anyway.
So, I was curious as to how much this was costing. I turn them on the evening of the 1st Sunday in Advent, and let them run through the 12 days of Christmas, so into the first week of January. Call it six weeks in all.
The current draw was 0.13 A, so the power consumption is approximately 16 W. Sixteen W x 24 hours = (approximately) 400 W-hrs = 0.4 kW-hr
At $0.10 per kW-hr here, that's $0.04 per day = $0.28 per week = about $1.70 over the six weeks I run the lights.
Better go back to the timer!