Where Have You Found LED Holiday Lights?

glassware asks: "Perhaps you know that LED holiday Lights last hundreds of times longer than regular lights. Perhaps you know that your local utility company recommends them for drastically lowering your electricity bill. But my real problem is, where can you find them? I've found lousy battery-operated LED lights in some department stores; but even in the best stores I give up after a half hour of searching, and so far I see only one vendor making them. Surely there must be alternatives. Where do you get your LED holiday lights?"

Fire safe, too

[mary_will_grow]

They also drastically reduce the chance of fire.

Who knew, a dried up dead tree strapped full of extension cords pumping mad current could be a fire hazard?!?!

Bad question, potentially interesting answers

[ke4roh]

The Foreverbright site [foreverbright.com] (linked from "holiday" in the intro) has a "Where to Buy" [foreverbright.com] link offering a lengthy list of retailers. I haven't checked the shelves yet, but it seems you should look at those little hardware stores and drugstores rather than random department stores if you want to buy them in person.

Um, no?

[Andy Dodd]

Yes, he's saying he's only found one vendor that makes them,

BUT HE'S ASKING IF ANYONE KNOWS OF ANY OTHERS!!!

That's NOT advertising. Now if the article were a review of these Forever Lights, it would be a Slashvertisement. But he has pointed out the one vendor he's found, but is asking if anyone knows of other sources. (Some pages, such as the LED Museum, mention, "inferior" lights, but give no details on where to find such lights if you WANT LED lights with a transformer at the base.)

As to the Ask Google trolls - I've asked Google and 90% of the links are pages that happen to have LED, Christmas, and light on the same page but do NOT have any content related to LED Christmas lights. The only Google links that came up in my search that were actually relevant were the links posted at the beginning of the article.

Re:Why use LEDs??

[ScottG]

The aesthetics are certainly debatable, but I don't find the difference in appearance between to the two lighting technologies to be interesting enough to debate.

As for the cost difference: Lets actually run some numbers:

Let's assume a string of traditional lights consumes 100 watts and a string of LEDs consumes nothing. (I think you would agree that both of these assumptions are more than fair to the LEDs).

If we energize the lights 8 hours per day for 30 days during each "holiday season", that is 240 hours per year that the lights are in use.

If we assume an electricity cost of US$0.10/kwh(which is typical around here, but varies widely depending where you live), that is an annual electricity cost of US$0.024. Lets just go ahead and round this up to 3 cents.

Let's further assume that the LED lights would last forever, but the traditional lights need to be replaced each year at a cost of US$1.50. We now have a total annual cost for the traditional lights of US$1.53 compared to the one time cost of US$20 for the LED lights.

That means it will take the LEDs approx 13 years to reach the break-even point against the traditional lights.

And remember, I made all my assumptions in the favor of the LEDs. Real LEDs do consume some power and real traditional lights don't need to be replaced every year and real LED lights will not last forever (the LEDs themselves might, but the wiring, etc will deteriote due to exposure to sun, weather, etc). So, in reality the break-even point is probably much more than 13 years.

If you just crave the LEDs, then go ahead and buy them, but don't try to claim that you are saving money by doing it.

Re:Fire safe, too

[Rick the Red]

Not using lights at all further reduces the fire hazard. Not killing a tree and leaving it in your house to dry just about eliminates the fire hazard.

Re:Perfect... Maybe

[kps]

It's not that I've bothered to check (this being Slashdot, after all), but maybe they convert AC to DC with, um, like, diodes? Somebody mentioned 80 LED strings, and with them in series, they'd get around 2V peak (which is reasonable) and the whole string would pull 1 or 2 amps.

(It isn't practical to wire LEDs in parallel, because they aren't particularly uniform in resistance, and besides, the transformer to put out 2V at 2 amps would be too expensive for Christmas lights.)

By the way, while LEDs have their advantages, they are not, generally, more efficient than other lamps. A current 'super-bright' LED yields around 2 to 5 lumens per watt, with high-end ones (which again are too expensive to be in these Christmas lights) about 10 lm/W. Normal incandescents are around 6 lm/W, although the tiny coloured ones in Christmas light strings are indeed most likely less efficient. Halogen incandescents give around 20 lm/W, and fluorescent tubes around 80 lm/W.

Re:And where can you find ones NOT made in China?

[anomaly]

Hear Hear! I choose to boycott them because of their religious oppression, human rights abuses, and the fact that the trade imbalance with the US entirely funds the ballistic missiles that they point at us.

It is becoming increasingly difficult to find products not made in China. This is particularly true in the areas of children's books/toys and electronics. I recently had to poke through each model of DVD player offered by a chain store to find ONE not manufactured in China. In one case, the display model was made in Japan, but every single unit of that model on the shelf was made in China!

Our culture cares more about getting a cheap DVD player or kid's toy than we are about other humans working as slave labor for an oppressive government. It's sad.

I haven't found a solution other than physically visiting the store and looking carefully for the "made in China" stamp on the box. If you find one, please let me know.

Regards,
Anomaly

Re:Perfect... Maybe

[kps]

Oops, typo in the above post. Watts.

Also, they might well use two strings of 40 LEDs each.
That way they'd get brighter lights from cheaper LEDs at the cost of reliability and a little extra wire.

Re:Perfect... Maybe

[DRACO-]

Why not try something a little cleaner.. some el strips (electro luminecence). You could super glue these pretty cleanly to the bike body. Im considering ordering up some el strips for the interrior of my car. In my town people always expect me to feature some out of the ordinary gadget somewhere near me.

DRACO-