LED quickly becoming the standard for Christmas lights

BEND, Ore. (AP) — Sure, they use less electricity, last longer and their price continues to drop. But there's another reason LED lights have become the norm for holiday illumination.

"I think the draw is what they look like," said Warren Cook, manager of energy efficiency at the Oregon Department of Energy. The lights are getting brighter, and each year there are more colors.

The days of the incandescent light bulb as a Christmas fixture — hanging from eaves, circling windows and brightening Christmas trees — are fading. Increasingly over the past five to 10 years, light-emitting diodes, or LEDs, have taken over the holiday light market.

The switch to LED holiday lights parallels the move to LED light bulbs for lamps and lights around the house, said Lizzie Rubado, an energy expert at the Energy Trust of Oregon, a Portland-based nonprofit helping Oregon businesses and residents figure out ways to be more energy efficient.

"They are definitely becoming the new standard," she said.

Compared to a string of incandescent mini lights, LED holiday lights use about 70 percent less electricity, Rubado said. The lights are also expected to last years and do not individually burn out.

"Plus, they are brighter, and they are safer for your greenery," she said.

That's because they do not heat up like incandescent lights.

Cook crunched some numbers to detail the electricity savings of going from incandescent to LED holiday lights. Assuming they would be on for a combined 480 hours over the holiday season, 1,000 LED lights would use about $3.30 in electricity, and 1,000 incandescent mini lights would use about $19.60 worth. He noted that the $15 in savings is enough to buy three strings of LED lights if found on sale for $5 each.

Unlike compact fluorescent lamps, or CFLs, LED lights do not contain mercury so their disposal does not require finding a store or recycler who will take them, Rubado said.

The three main professional holiday light installers in Bend have changed over from incandescent lights to LED lights, said Brennan Morrow, owner of one such company — Christmas Lights R Us.

"They just won't do the old lights," he said.

Like Cook and Rubado, he listed reasons of energy efficiency and appearance, as well as durability. In his business, he wants lights that can handle being put up and taken down for years. So LEDs have met the challenge.

"You can run them over with your car, and they often hold up," he said.

Holiday light hangers also like the LED lights because more of them can be strung together and plugged into one outlet than incandescent lights.

Think of Clark Griswold's power grid-depleting display in the 1989 movie "National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation." His tangle of extension cords supplied thousands of incandescent lights, making for an electrical supply headache.

"He would have never have had that problem if he had had LEDs," Cook said.