Lights of the Ozarks More Energy Efficient

First posted on 12-15-2008

The Lights of the Ozarks, Fayetteville, Arkansas’ annual Christmastime light spectacular, is making a gradual shift away from incandescent light bulbs over to a more energy efficient LED bulb.

The transition was to be made over a four year period and Fayetteville is already has 60 percent of the change-over completed. The city purchased 200 strands of 100-bulb LED lights this year and city officials are confident they can have all LED bulbs by 2010.

The LED bulbs are said to be 80 percent more efficient while using 88 percent less energy than the traditional incandescent bulbs. And with 400,000 lights, that is a lot of energy saved.

While the LED lights do cost more up front (a fifty foot strand of LED’s is $11 while the regular strands are $5 for a 68 foot section), there is so much cost savings after implementation that the transition is well worth it. Besides the energy savings, the LED bulbs are made of plastic, which means less breakage.

Since the LED’s burn brighter despite the lower energy rating, fewer bulbs are needed overall to produce the same amount of light as in previous years. In fact, Fayetteville will end up with 300,000 LED bulbs when the project is completed, about 25 percent fewer bulbs.

And, city officials say that past experience demonstrates they would have to replace the incandescent strands every one to two years because of damage and wear. But the LED’s are rated at 50,000 hours of use, about 148 years at Lights of the Ozarks’ normal usage.

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