Light Up With Green In Mind
Neighbourhoods are starting to glow with their festive displays, like this annual ‘light up’ on Alward Street
Prince George, BC – The start of December often signals the ‘flip of the switch’ for residential Christmas lighting displays and BC Hydro is out with a few tips aimed at allowing you to spend your money on family and fun, instead of your energy bill.
Northern Community Relations Coordinator, Dave Mosure, admits the holidays could seem dull and dark without festive lights and says no one is suggesting people should go without the twinkle they love on their homes, yard, or in their trees. But, he says, some lights are definitely more energy-efficient than others.
Mosure says the traditional incandescent bulbs are the most wasteful choice on the market today, consuming five- to seven-watts of electricity per hour, per bulb. On a string of 50 lights, that would amount to 250 watts per hour. Less than 10-percent of the power goes into creating light, the rest is heat.
"By switching to LED holiday lighting and incorporating timers, customers can not only make a significant reduction to their seasonal lighting costs," says Mosure. "But also help avoid the need to build new generation sources, which is more costly than the heritage assets BC Hydro built 30 and 40 years ago."
If you do have lots of traditional incandescent light strings left and don’t want to, or cannot afford to replace them, Hydro is suggesting using fewer lights for a shorter season to reduce your energy use. Another suggestion is to consider switching to a pre-lit LED artificial tree, which uses very little energy, lasts for many years and is very safe because it gives off virtually no heat.
Comments
That headline makes me laugh. I thought it had other meaning.
What the heck does using less power have to do with being “green”? Hydro produced electricity is one of the cleanest and greenest power there is! Pre lit artificial tree! How green is that? It makes me wonder how many artificial trees are clogging up the land fills aiding in the production of methane. Maybe the article title should be “Save power by using led lights and timers so we can sell the surplus to the USA”.
Yea the industrial process involved to make artificial trees is soo green, plastic is good for us. Think I’ll just stick with a real tree.
The wheels go around in the turbine whether of not you turn on the lights. If you want to be green go live in the bush and eat moosemeat all year round and wear animals skins, throw away your cel phone and your computer an TV, your SUV, your cadillac,your classic car and all conveniences. Stop watering your lawn and cutting the grass. Shovel the snow without a snowblower. Don’t buy bug repellent and then tell me you’re doing what you can. Bull—-!! Your so full of manure you are giving off methane gas. There’s no such thing AS “BEING GREEN” only in your deceived head.
Green is not a finite state. Green is a variable where infinity on the one hand is never zero impact and on the other hand is never large enough on an individual basis to make a major difference.
However, the collective is a different story when it comes to affecting the sustainability of a living system on which humans depend. What makes it even more complex is that what we think may be sustainable will actually prove not to be sustainable and what we think may not be sustainable may actually prove to be sustainable, all giving consideration of a time span of some human dimension such as the often used 7 generation notion.
So, again supertech, your point of view makes your conclusion rather useless. We may as well all live our lives without a care in the world and whatever happens, happens.
You have just shown me that your philosophy of life is fatalism.
Nothing wrong with that, but not everyone subscribes to that philosophy, so you will have to determine how you can accommodate those who do not. :-)
So not switching over to led lights will require building another power plant, ya right. Would that be another friends of fiberials heavily taxpayer subsidized private generating plant which will get built anyhow.
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