I was curious myself about the power used. I put an ammeter on these LED lights: 4 Watts total. I love these LED's (even more than Crystal).
The house is on the grid, the barn is RE. You can see the distance between is large, so there's a little bit of economic benefit to the RE power out there.
The tower lowers and raises soooo easily. In fact, it is the most satisfying part of my system. The process takes about 20 minutes each way. I spent an hour winding the strand of lights around and around, tying up every so often. Total process, 2 hours.
Then I had to take it all down and plug the upper segment into the lower one! AHHH!
Then put it back up again. By the time I was done it was just getting dark (4PM here) so I didn't have long to wait before lighting up my handiwork to full effect.