In this issue

Aspen, Colo., lights up efficiently for holidays

The Aspen Parks Department decked the trees on the Downtown Mall with energy-efficient LED lights for the first time in 2006. (Photo by Karen Keeney, Aspen Parks Department)

Since LED holiday decorations first appeared on the market in 2001, homeowners have snapped them up, attracted by the technology's energy-efficiency, longer life and sturdier construction—the same reasons the city of Aspen, Colo., switched from conventional holiday lighting. 

Winter is the world-famous ski resort's high season, so the city dresses up for visitors. From Thanksgiving until early spring, the tree trunks and streetlight poles in downtown Aspen, City Hall and the Parks office are decked out in lights. "We think of them as winter lights, rather than Christmas lights," explained Parks Operations Superintendent Tom Rubel.

In all, that amounted to about seven miles of C-7 and twinkle lights burning 18 hours daily for 100 days. City Utility Director Phil Overeynder estimated that the display used 34.44 kilowatts per season at a cost of $4,339.

City realizes big electricity savings

Tom Rubel doesn't remember who first came up with the idea of replacing the city decorations, but he does recall that it wasn't hard to persuade the city council.  The parks department easily got approval to invest $35,000 in new LED decorations for the 2006 holiday season. Rubel purchased the lights online from Diogen, a lighting manufacturer in Centennial, Colo., instead of trying to find a local supplier with enough stock.

In addition to buying energy-efficient lights, the city also put daylight sensors on the light strings on the trees. "That cut down the number of hours the lights were on from 18 to 12," said Rubel. "Some strings used to stay on all the time. The sensors were an important part of the savings."

The new decorations and sensor system proved to be good investments from the start. Overeynder calculated the savings based on Aspen's residential retail electric rate.

• Old system: 287a X 120v = 34.44 kW
  34.44 kW X 18 hrs/day X 100 days/season= 61,992 kWh/season
  61,992 kWh X $.07/kWh = $4,339/season

• New system: 28.7a X 120 v = 3.44 kW
  3.44 kW x 12 hrs/day x 100 days/season= 4128 kWh/season
  4128 kWh x $.07/kWh = $289/season

• Savings: 57,864 kWh/season; $4,050/season

The actual cost savings may be less, since the city buys wholesale electric power, but the reduction in electricity use is no less impressive. The LED decorations will have about a three-year payback, followed by years of cost savings.

Reduced maintenance a major advantage

The case for the energy-efficient alternative could have made itself on electricity costs alone, but there were greater advantages from the parks department's point of view. "The old glass bulb display required tons of maintenance at a cost of about $8,000 per year," said Rubel.

Parks workers used to spend much of the season replacing burnt-out bulbs and C-7 bulbs that vandals pull out. In the case of the twinkle-lights, they often replaced entire strings rather than do a time-consuming search for the bad light. "The department's work load has grown in recent years," explained Rubel. "If it wasn't a quick fix, we just threw out the string. We were lucky to get two years out of a twinkle lights set."

By comparison, LED lights are nearly indestructible, a definite plus for public decorations. Rubel observed that the decorations get a lot of wear and tear, so the strings may not last the advertised 15 to 20 years. "It's likely to be closer to 10 years, but we will still be way ahead of the game. This year was so much nicer in terms of maintenance," he added.

Displays as festive as ever

Residents and visitors have offered mostly positive feedback on the new decorations. The city decorates its buildings with colored lights, wraps light poles with soft white lights and tree trunks with bright white lights. "A few people said the bright whites are a little too bright, but otherwise, nobody complained about the change," said Rubel.

The Sardy House, a historic bed-and-breakfast near downtown Aspen, even one-upped the city in switching to LED decorations. "The owners put the display on a programmable computer system that changes colors as you watch," said Aspen Utilities Efficiency Manager Jeff Rice. "It looks great, and people love walking by the place."

Aspen utilities is currently working on a proposal for an LED holiday light program to get customers to adopt energy-efficient decorations. But as the Sardy House demonstrated, "This is a very progressive—and competitive—area," Rice said. "We expect to see quite a few residences, as well as businesses and resorts, using LED’s this year."

That's one Christmas decorating competition that everyone should consider joining. The Department of Energy estimates that if we all replaced our traditional incandescent decorations with LED-base lights, the nation could save more than 2 billion kW in a 30-day period around the holidays each year. That is enough electricity to light 200,000 houses for a year on energy savings alone. 

To learn more about efficient holiday lighting options, see the 2007 Holiday Lighting fact sheet. Western customers can download the latest edition of this popular publication and imprint it with their logo and contact information. Or Energy Services can lay out the customized fact sheet and provide a pdf file. Contact the Energy Services Bulletin editor for more information—and have an energy-efficient and happy holiday.