The cost to power 25,000 LED holiday lights in WI for one month (9hrs/day for 31 days) is $46 vs $4,278 to power 25,000 incandescent holiday lights. Estately
What about the energy use during the holidays from on-line shopping? Cyber Monday logged a record-breaking $6.5 billion in on-line sales alone. That translates into huge energy use by data centers. One Google query takes 1,000 joules (1kJ), the equivalent energy to operate one incandescent light bulb for 10 seconds. With mobile phone computing and the internet of things, data center use is increasing exponentially, using 3 percent of the power grid now or 12-15 GW per year. While less than the energy used in transportation, it’s important that research is underway to reduce the energy use of data centers. To learn more, see Holiday Lights redux
Happy Holidays!