LED Christmas lights

[Titantornado]

I noticed they had them for 50% off at Rite-Aid, so I picked up a 60 light string for $3.99 to play around with and see how good (or bad) they might be.  Unfortunately, it doesn't have a bridge rectifier, so you have that 60 Hz flicker.  It consists of two series'd strings of 30, making for 4 VAC for each lamp.  Plugged them into the Kill-a-Watt, and the whole 60 light string registers 1 watt.

For these reasonable prices and power consumptions, theres no reason an RE home can't share the tradition of Christmas lights.  I think I'll go buy up a bunch on Tuesday.

[halfcrazy]

yes they are real low power. i kinda like the 60 hz flicker makes them twinkle we have about 20 strings here on our offgrid home will have 20 more next year.

[nailed]

I think I have up 20 strings of lights.  The out side of the house is decorated and I'm only 1/2 mile off the road.  It's about 5 miles to hit asphalt.  But anything to keep my g/f happy.  

[Titantornado]

I picked up 6 more strings, and hooked them all up to the Kill-a-Watt meter, to get a more accurate result, which was an average 2.7 watts per set.

I guess the Kill-a-Watt isn't all that accurate at very low currents, eh?

[VisualMonster]

I have a small alarm clock that uses less than 1 watt of power (120v).  I found the best way to get an accurate measure of usage was to let the killowatt meter run for a few days, then figure it out based on Kw Hours used...