Has anyone here had any experience with LED Christmas Lights? Yes, I said Christmas Lights, not holiday lights.
I've been looking around the internet and there do seem to be lots of offerings. You can even get ones with standard C7 & C9 size lamp enclosures.
(http://ssl.adhost.com/noveltylights/prodimg/MULTI_B.jpg)
Any experiences, words of wisdom?? Seems like they'd be ideal for off grid situations.
I have not used them but they do seem to be just right for off-grid. By the way, I take it you are running solar power or wind power? If so, I really need some info as to how to configure a setup for a home. Could you please elaborate on this?
I did find this information on the net about LED Christmas lights.
- 90% less energy
- 50,000 hour buld life
- UL and Energy Star Approved
With that being said I am under the understanding that most anything with an Energy Star approval can easily be used with an off-grid electrical setup. Plus having a 90% less energy usage would most certainly tell me they would be ideal.
check this out also http://www.ledsmagazine.com/news/4/12/13 (http://www.ledsmagazine.com/news/4/12/13)
Energy Star does not necessarily mean extremely efficient. I think it more means that the company displaying it has paid a big fee to someone to use it.
My 1934 General Electric refrigerator is about 300 percent more efficient than our new LG French Door Energy Star refrigerator, in fact it is pretty well known as the most efficient refrigerator ever made. A bit small and not auto defrost etc. but wins hands down on efficiency.
Search the wind and solar terms here and you should get a lot of info - sorry but I am short on time for the next week or two due to work. I am off grid using wind and solar. We have 2 freezers, 2 refrigerators - a 1.5 hp pump we pump around 500 GPD with for our garden.
Quote from: alcowboy on October 30, 2008, 07:53:44 AM
With that being said I am under the understanding that most anything with an Energy Star approval can easily be used with an off-grid electrical setup.
Depends. You'd be much better off with an Energy Star rated item compared to most that are not rated. I'm cautious with my answer to that because it depends on the size of the off grid system, especially the size of the battery bank.
With a large enough battery bank it is possible to run a reasonably sized modern Energy Star refrigerator, for example. But that does require a lot of batteries and more PV panels.
Have you seen the Energy Star website with it's ratings?
http://www.energystar.gov/
You can look up appliances and pick them by energy use as tested under the same conditions.
More later about solar. We will be going with PV. At present I have 4 gold cart batteries in the RV that are recharged by generator; an unsatisfactory solution for long time use. In spring we'll build the PV system.
We bought a Conserv Freezer - Denmark - more efficient than energy star and not listed. The name has since been changed. I suggest reading up on solar sites for the most efficient ones. They are not as cheap as energy star.
Since then we have bought energy star most efficient models and upgraded our system but we are lagging a bit on the power.
interesting...think I've seen the Christmas lights before....I have LED spot lights above my three front windows that shine down onto the window ledge, on the interior that is.....on AAA batteries which I realize still cost money to replace, but I like them, they serve the purpose...didn't have to deal with the grid crap and all....bought them about 6 months ago, still working on same batteries but don't use them much...just when I have company, or in the mood.....jb... 8)
I have a building that I built this year to house my Bowflex and other items. I put solar spot lights (LED) on the front for lighting and it works well!