Solar powered Christmas Lights

by Jason

Ask someone to think about the Christmas season and to call up visual memories thereof, and chances are extremely good that they will bring up, “The lights.” Christmas lights are, in fact, probably about as intrinsically associated with the holiday as the visual icons of Santa and of Christmas trees, and are prevalent in far more places. Lights decorate homes inside and out, decorate the fronts of businesses, decorate lamp-posts along the streets, and decorate both the natural trees along properties and the large evergreen trees transplanted to town squares to become Christmas trees.

All of those lights use up an insane amount of electricity, and because of that, many of those lights have gone out in recent years, as it has gotten harder to brush off their expense in the name of tradition. Think, though, about the fact that the majority of those lights are placed OUTSIDE. Now think about the fact that solar powered Christmas lights have become available in a wide variety of styles.

Not just eco-friendlier, solar powered lights are also budget-friendlier. Sure, the up-front cost of purchase is higher. The average string of solar-powered lights is going to range between $10 and $20, depending on the length and the number of lights, in contrast to the average price of a string of electrically-powered lights, which ranges in price from $5 to $10. You must consider, however, that the average string of electrically-powered incandescent lights will use up that price difference in what you pay for their electrical usage (and that’s at the current price per kilowatt hour, something which keeps going up) in about a month’s solid usage time. Solar-power lights not only remove the element of energy consumption, but they use LED lights, which last around ten times as long as incandescent lights.

So, if you take care of your lights so that they remain usable from one year to the next, the savings are considerable – you might essentially get nine years’ worth of free Christmas lighting.