| November
26, 2007
Get the LED out
 Every year, Gatlinburg, Tenn., goes all-out during the
holidays, festooning downtown trees, lamp posts and storefronts with
millions of glittering, colored lights.
This coming holiday season, the lights will look
even more dazzling than they have in years past. That’s because Gatlinburg now uses
LED lights instead of traditional incandescent bulbs. “We’ve
heard comments that they’re more attractive and classier than the
traditional lights,” says Dave Perella, executive director of the
Gatlinburg Dept. of Tourism.
Light-emitting diodes have been around for about 30 years, and until
recently have been best known for supplying the light for the numbers
on digital alarm clocks and the displays on televisions, DVD players,
stereos and other appliances. In the last five years though, technology
has created LED light bright enough, and polychromatic enough, to work
as holiday lights.
“They used to be just indicators, and now they are illuminators,” says
Jordon Papanier, marketing manager at Ledtronics, a Torrance, Calif.-based
manufacturer of LED holiday lights.
 For homeowners, there’s good news, and not-so-good
news, when it comes to using LED lights during the holidays. The good
news, especially
for environmentally minded homeowners, is that LED lights use 70 to 90
percent less energy than their predecessors. A string of incandescent
holiday lights consumes 157.5 watts an hour, while the same string of
LED lights uses 12.5 watts per hour, Perella says.
Image courtesy Gatlinburg Department of Tourism
Their construction – a
semiconductor chip encased in epoxy, compared to an incandescent light’s
thin shell of glass around a delicate filament – also gives them
a long life. In fact, LED lights last 50,000 to 100,000 hours, compared
to 2,000 for a traditional bulb. (In other words, chances are you won’t
pull LEDs out of storage, only to find that half of the lights have expired
over the summer.)
Less energy and longer lives mean that LED lights are cost-effective,
especially for homeowners who love to use lots of lights. Another benefit:
Because they use less energy, the lights are cool to the touch, and therefore
safer.
LED lights are weatherproof, and perform well both
inside and outside. Outside, they look better if there’s not a lot of competition from
landscape lighting or streetlights. Inside, use them the same way you’d
use a string of incandescent lights.
The lights can be somewhat difficult to find, and
they’re more
expensive than old-fashioned incandescent lights. LED holiday lights
can cost up to $30 a strand, compared to $6 or $7 for traditional lights.
And, Papanier cautions, you get what you pay for: Less expensive LED
strings feature red and yellow bulbs, not the more costly greens and
blues. For additional
information contact LEDtronics toll free at 1-800-579-4875, telephone
310-534-1505, fax at 310-534-1424, e-mail at; webmaster@LEDtronics.comThis
e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript
enabled to view it or postal mail at LEDtronics Inc., 23105 Kashiwa Court,
Torrance, CA 90505. Visit our website at: www.ledtronics.com.
Read the product datasheets online
at: White and Multicolor Indoor/Outdoor LED Christmas Lights
Link to: Philly
Burbs.com
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