Christmas lights

[FourChimneys]

Yes, yes, I know it's early yet but I was discussing this with a friend today.

With the huge increases in energy, are people going to decorate the outside of their houses as much this year? Will lights go up later, be switched on for fewer hours, or not go up at all? What are you doing?

Seeing the lights is one of my favourite things about midwinter.

I use garlands with fairy lights that run on batteries. They don't take much (one set of batteries lasts for a month),so I'll do it this year too.
Unless you are like one of those over the top houses featured on TV, I don't think a couple string of lights adds much to your bill.

I've checked the boxes of two of my sets of lights:

40 bulb LED lights: 1.2W
120 bulb LED lights: 3.6W

So I assume it's 1.2W per 40 bulbs.

If I've done the maths right:

• electricity unit price is in kWh (one kilowatt per hour)
• one kilowatt is 1,000 watts
• 1,000W divided by 3.6W (a string of 120 bulbs) is 277 (hours)
• so lighting a string of 120 bulbs for 277 hours would use 1 kilowatt of electricity, probably about 60p under the new price cap.
• 277 hours would be 6 hours per day for 46 days.

Have I done that right? Does it really take so little electricity to run a string of LED bulbs?