Don’t get too excited, or rather be quick, because this offer (PDF) is apparently only good until the 17th of this month. Home Depot is offering to trade-in old, electricity-guzzling, incandescent Christmas lights for much more energy-efficient LED lights at a reasonable discount.
Why is it a good thing for a lot of people to switch to LED lights? Well, as Grist has pointed out, the U.S. Department of Energy has estimated that, annually, U.S. Christmas lights consume as much power as 500,000 homes during an average month. Overall, it’s expensive, and of course a lot of fossil fuel-fired power is still a big part of that massive energy consumption – so it makes sense to switch to LEDs sooner rather than later. The Department of Energy has also estimated that as much as $410 million could be saved in electricity nationally if everybody switched to using LEDs.
You’ll find a lot more LEDs on store shelves this year, too, and not only at Home Depot. Walmart is reportedly devoting as much of half of its Christmas light shelf-space to LEDs, and offering a string of 50 mini LED lights for $5, which is down from well over $6 last year. In general, LED lights are getting cheaper by the year.
General Electric is expecting two-fifths of all strings of lights to be LEDs this year; so, it looks LEDs might officially constitute a bandwagon. Are you going to be getting on that LED-lit bandwagon this year?
Image CC licensed by Peter Gordon
Via Grist
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