O Christmas tree

We have snow on the ground, the temperature rarely seems to get above freezing and the mail box if full of catalogs; it must be Christmas. And what is Christmas without a Christmas tree? My wife and I haven’t gone out and gotten a tree the last couple years, but this year we decided that it would be nice. We have a local tree farm that has a really good selection (http://www.pumpkinhillfarm.com/frame.htm) and the people are really friendly. The price was $40.00 for any tree they had which, in my opinion, was a fair price considering the selection and quality of the trees. After walking through the snow and sizing up all the trees, my wife and I found one that we liked, cut it down, and tied it to the car and home we went. After getting it all decorated we plugged in the lights (5 strands) and admired the beauty of it. Of course, after admiring it for a while I had to ask the question, ‘What is this tree doing to my electric bill?’ The answer came by plugging the tree into a meter. Any guesses on the usage? Well our tree with 5 strands of regular small lights is costing us 180 watts of electricity. That may not seem like a lot, but it is equivalent to running a 100 watt and a 75 watt incandescent light bulbs. Depending on how long you leave it on that can definitely add a noticeable change to your electric bill. My immediate solution was to try to run the tree lights off the portable inverter/battery that I had built thus taking the tree off of the electric bill. Although this seemed like a good idea, the end result was that it drained my 75 amp/hour battery to 50 % capacity in a little over 2 hours. This is the same battery that powered the refrigerator for over 8 hours before draining the same battery to the same point. That gave me a clear picture of the power being user here. Obviously I abandoned the portable inverter/battery idea since the power drain was too great and plugged the lights back into the wall.

So, what is my point here? Am I suggesting not lighting up your Christmas tree? I am not Scrooge and would never suggest such a thing since a Christmas tree with lights is a very beautiful icon of the holiday. What I am suggesting though is that you think about the electricity that it is using, and maybe only keep your tree lit up occasionally when you or others are around to enjoy it, or by reducing your electric usage in some other parts of your house during this season. I do know that they do sell LED Christmas lights that which are rated at using a lot less electricity; this may also be an option if you are in the market for new Christmas lights this year.

So, as you light up that Christmas tree this year and stand back to admire it, take a minute to think about the energy required to create this beautiful symbol of the holiday. Then again, this is just Life according to Troy.