As the holidays approach and decorating begins, consider using light emitting diode (LED) holiday lights to save energy. Holiday lighting can add up to $50 to November and December household power bills.

LED holiday lights use 20 percent of the energy used by regular incandescent holiday lights and last for up to 100,000 hours indoors. LED lights are more expensive initially than incandescent lights but save so much energy over the lifetime of the bulb that they will pay for themselves and save money. It costs about $0.12 per kilowatt hour to run LED mini-lights compared to $1.02 per kilowatt hour for incandescent mini-lights and $0.23 per kilowatt hour for LED C7 (large bulb) lights compared to $7.09 per kilowatt for incandescent C7 bulbs. For more information click here.

The following chart indicates the total cost to purchase and operate different types of holiday lights for five years, according the City of Seattle:

LED lights are also more durable and shatter less, which means less replacement and, therefore, less disposal of mostly non-recyclable strings of lights. Happy Holidays!