The lights come out this week. A few strands go up for Halloween, and plenty of them stay up straight through New Year's.
Nobody thinks of a strand of lights as an appliance, but an old one can cost a lot more to run than you'd guess.
Below: what a strand of holiday lights really costs, the timer that shuts them off at bedtime, a bed warmer that costs pennies a night, the billing switch that flattens winter, and where to ask for help with heat.
Reply and tell us: are your holiday lights old-school bulbs or LEDs? We read every one.
What a Strand of Holiday Lights Really Costs
Image: The Home Wire
The strand you pull out of the bin this week decides most of what your lights cost this season.
The big old-fashioned bulbs are the expensive ones. A C9 is the large, thumb-sized bulb you see along rooflines, and a standard incandescent C9 draws 7 watts, per a 1000Bulbs listing. A 25-bulb strand pulls 175 watts.
An LED C9 does the same job on about 0.6 watts a bulb, per 1000Bulbs, or 15 watts for the strand. Old incandescent mini lights land in between, at about 0.48 watts a bulb per a Cornell Cooperative Extension fact sheet, or 48 watts for a 100-light strand.
TLDR: watts tell you how hard something pulls power. More watts means more money for every hour it's on.
Here's what each strand costs over 35 nights at 6 hours a night, at August's national average of 18.16 cents per kWh from the EIA:
Old C9 strand: about $6.67
LED C9 strand: about 57 cents
Old mini lights: about $1.83
That's per strand. A roofline with five old C9 strands comes to about $33 for the season, against under $3 in LED.
LEDs have one more thing going for them. The Cornell sheet notes they stay cool to the touch however long they're on, which matters on a dry wreath or a wooden porch rail.
The other half of the bill is hours. Left on from dusk to dawn, which is about 14 hours a night in December, one old C9 strand runs about $15.57 over those same 35 nights.
So the order of fixes is simple:
Count your old C9 strands. Those are the ones worth swapping for LED when they die or go on sale.
Leave old mini lights alone until they fail. At under $2 a season, they aren't worth replacing early.
Put whatever you keep on a timer that shuts it off at bedtime.
Renters can do all three, since they're your lights and your cords. Scroll down for the timer we'd use.
One quick tap
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Worth a Look
A Timer That Turns the Lights Off at Bedtime
If you're keeping your old lights another year, the cheapest upgrade is the switch. The Philips Light-Sensing Outdoor Timer is the one we'd point you to, at $22.95 at time of writing.
A light sensor turns your lights on at dusk without you touching anything. Then a dial shuts them off 2, 4, 6 or 8 hours after sunset, or leaves them on until dawn. It has two outlets and is rated for outdoor use.
Here's the math. Cutting one old C9 strand from dusk-to-dawn down to 6 hours saves about $8.90 over the 35 nights above. On one strand, the timer pays for itself in under three seasons. On three strands, it pays for itself this year.
We haven't run this one through a season ourselves. The features and price come from the Amazon listing.
That said, Philips lists the two outlets as polarized, so check that your light plugs fit before you build the whole display around it.
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The Bed Warmer That Costs 17 Cents a Night
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The cheapest way to be warm at 2 a.m. is to heat the bed, not the bedroom.
A queen-size Sunbeam heated mattress pad is rated at 120 watts, per its Walmart listing. Even if it ran at full power for 8 hours, that's under 1 kWh, or about 17 cents a night at August's national average price.
For comparison, a typical 1,500-watt space heater uses that same kWh in about 40 minutes.
Want to check your own? The watts on the label are the worst case. Multiply watts by hours, divide by 1,000, and you have the kWh it can use in a night.
A pad also lets you set the thermostat a little lower at night, because the warmth is where you are. Start with one or two degrees and see how you sleep.
Before the first night:
Read the manual's list of do-nots. Most tell you not to use the pad folded or bunched up.
Spread it flat under the fitted sheet, with the cord running clear of the bed frame.
Warm the bed before you get in, then turn it down to the lowest setting that keeps you comfortable.
It plugs into any outlet, so it works the same in a rental. If you share a bed with someone who runs hot, a queen or king with two controls lets each side pick its own setting.
Spread Winter's Bills Across the Year
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Your utility bill doesn't arrive evenly. A January bill can be far bigger than September's. Budget billing smooths that out: the utility averages your year and charges you the same amount every month.
Here's how one electric co-op, PRECorp, runs it:
It averages your annual billing and adds a 5 percent buffer.
You pay that fixed amount for 11 months.
The 12th bill settles the difference between what you paid and what you actually used.
You need a current account and 12 months of history to join.
PRECorp says October is a great time to sign up, before winter sets in. If you're behind on payments, ask your utility what it offers instead.
It doesn't lower your total, though. It moves money from winter into the cheaper months, and a cold winter can mean a bigger settle-up bill at the end.
Most utilities offer some version, sometimes called levelized billing, and the rules vary. Search your utility's name plus "budget billing," or call the number on your bill. If you rent and pay your own utility bill, you can usually ask about it too.
Winter Energy Help, and Where to Ask for It
If heating bills are a real squeeze, there's federal money set aside for exactly that.
The Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, or LIHEAP, helps pay home energy bills. It also covers energy emergencies, weatherization and minor energy-related home repairs. It helps with summer cooling too, so it isn't only a winter call.
You don't apply to Washington. Help runs through state and local offices, and the program's own site points you to two ways in:
Find your local office at EnergyHelp.us.
Or call 1-866-674-6327, the National Energy Assistance Referral line.
There's a second program for the house itself. The DOE's Weatherization Assistance Program makes low-income homes more efficient, and a national evaluation found those households save $372 or more a year on average. It weatherizes about 32,000 homes a year with DOE funds, so it's worth asking early.
The rules on who qualifies are set where you live. The local office is the place to ask, including if you rent, and checking costs nothing.
If this isn't you, it might be someone you know. A parent on a fixed income is a good person to forward this one to.
That's Tuesday: what your lights really cost, a timer, a warm bed, budget billing and winter energy help.
If you only do one thing this week, count the big old bulbs before they go back on the house.
Forward this to whoever in your house hangs the lights.
See you tomorrow.
The Home Wire
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