Jefffrompawpaw Posted December 30, 2014 Share Posted December 30, 2014 I was looking at youtube at some other shows and read in the comments section that a pretty grand display was only costing 9.00 a month. I find that very interesting. I'm curious at what my show costs. I'm in my first year and i've had the statement "can't wait to see your electric bill' more than once already. I'm fairly confident that it won't be much. I have a 100% LED show all running on a single controller on one 20 amp GFI at 5 hours a day. Any electrical genius want to guide me on how to figure this out? I would really like to brag that my show is "green" only costing 9.00 a month too. This may be posted somewhere, but using the search and scrolling through the threads I can't find it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grinch Posted December 30, 2014 Share Posted December 30, 2014 Compare light bills with previous months, also remember we are flashing the lights ON and OFF a lot. So there are a lot of our bulbs in the OFF state or fade state. People that have static displays have all lights ON 100% for the entire period. Just go outside and pick a bulb and watch how long that one bulb is on during a song or during a one hour period. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
uncledan Posted December 30, 2014 Share Posted December 30, 2014 No "Green" here. More like $9.00 an hour with all incandescent display with exception of pixel tree and RGB floods. I'm transitioning into RGB next year. First electric bill went up $240.00 for 10 days of lights... You should be able to track usage with utility company online. If not your first bill with lights on it should've been here by now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
snalye Posted December 30, 2014 Share Posted December 30, 2014 So to get the less amount of money on the electrical bill is to use LEDs and not incandescent? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grinch Posted December 30, 2014 Share Posted December 30, 2014 So to get the less amount of money on the electrical bill is to use LEDs and not incandescent? LEDS typically use one tenth of the power. So yesBut they do cost more to purchase Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spoonjr Posted December 30, 2014 Share Posted December 30, 2014 I get an E-mail from my power company half way through my billing period telling me what my current useage is and projected. Curently I will be $4.00 less this month, lights on, than last month. Stove as used all day andd the night before for Thanksgiving. Stove will be on for Christmas as well. Just got my bill and it is just over $2.00 higher this month, lights on. I am small, 9000 lights but 100% LED. Much cheaper with LED lights. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dgrant Posted December 30, 2014 Share Posted December 30, 2014 Mine was at about $12 more last year. This year I have a bit more so will see. I'm about %90 LED Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KStatefan Posted December 30, 2014 Share Posted December 30, 2014 (edited) I was looking at youtube at some other shows and read in the comments section that a pretty grand display was only costing 9.00 a month. I find that very interesting. I'm curious at what my show costs. I'm in my first year and i've had the statement "can't wait to see your electric bill' more than once already. I'm fairly confident that it won't be much. I have a 100% LED show all running on a single controller on one 20 amp GFI at 5 hours a day. Any electrical genius want to guide me on how to figure this out? I would really like to brag that my show is "green" only costing 9.00 a month too. This may be posted somewhere, but using the search and scrolling through the threads I can't find it. How many lights do you have? It is hard to calculate a LOR show since the lights are going on and off. There was a spreadsheet that someone developed for S2 but I have not seen one for S3. I have my lights in a spreadsheet and calculate power based on them all on for 5 hours per day. I have a mix of C9 LED replacements, M5 and C6 LEDs. Below is the last line in my power spreadsheet. Total 4060 lights 864.8 watts 7.5 amps 5 Hours $ 0.12 KWH $ 0.52 Cost Per Day $ 18.16 Cost for the Season Edited December 30, 2014 by KStatefan Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jefffrompawpaw Posted December 30, 2014 Author Share Posted December 30, 2014 How many lights do you have? It is hard to calculate a LOR show since the lights are going on and off. There was a spreadsheet that someone developed for S2 but I have not seen one for S3. I have my lights in a spreadsheet and calculate power based on them all on for 5 hours per day. I have a mix of C9 LED replacements, M5 and C6 LEDs. Below is the last line in my power spreadsheet. Total 4060 lights 864.8 watts 7.5 amps 5 Hours $ 0.12 KWH $ 0.52 Cost Per Day $ 18.16 Cost for the Season KStatefan, I am really close to what you have. I'm at just a bit over 5,000 LEDs and 90% of those ar C6, noting higher than that. I can't go by last years previous bills because here in MI our winters can very cold and that means the furnaces may have to run a whole lot more. Even without light displays there are some big fluctuations from month to month. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
portcity_gt Posted December 30, 2014 Share Posted December 30, 2014 About 30,000 leds here, and my dec bill was $6 higher than my November bill. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jtomason Posted December 30, 2014 Share Posted December 30, 2014 Have a look at this post, too: http://forums.lightorama.com/index.php?/topic/34790-i-just-got-my-electric-bill-for-december/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JeffF Posted December 30, 2014 Share Posted December 30, 2014 (edited) We have ~75,000 incandescent lights and our bill is typically ~$150 more per season. We run all of them via LOR(aka not static) and only run them 3 to 3-1/2 hours per weeknight and 5 to 6 hours on the weekends. Now we also put up inflatables for the week or two before Christmas and if those were on 24/7 our bill would probably triple(we did that one year and almost shat!?!?). For us, changing over to LEDs wouldn't be cost effective. If we were starting out fresh I would probably buy colors in LED and white/clear in incandescent. Edited December 30, 2014 by JeffF Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Premier Posted December 30, 2014 Share Posted December 30, 2014 We had a huge drop in our utility bill this month compared to last year. We went ahead and bit the bullet and replaced all of our remaining incans with LEDs this year and saved a little over 200.00 in november, probably even more for december. So it will take a couple of more seasons to justify the change, I am just so happy to put our monies into the show rather than the utility companys pocket. LEDs are definitely worth it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steven Posted December 30, 2014 Share Posted December 30, 2014 Our house is completely solar powered. We build up a credit during the summer and we still have credit after December. It doesn't hurt that the display is about 80% LED. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
robongar Posted January 3, 2015 Share Posted January 3, 2015 If this of any help.Just out of curiosity, I started to log my meter everyday, from around 10 days before I put on my lights.I live in a bungalow, my daily usage would be lights, TV, fridge freezer ect. My daily usage is around 15 units a day. Other than when I use the washing machine and gas drier for one load when the usage increased by 2 units.When I run my show of 50,000 LED's from 17:00 - 23:00hrs (6 hours) my usage increases by 5 units. So in my case, you can see my usage increases by 1/3 rd or I guess you could also say 1 unit per 10,000 lights. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
viennaxmas Posted January 3, 2015 Share Posted January 3, 2015 I use a brultech monitor on the sub panel for the lights... The lights itself are around 10kwh per day. Add the show computer and TX and it ends up around 15kwh total. Makes around $2 per day. Interestingly enough, with all the power supplies for RGB stuff, most power used goes into standby. I can certainly see the point during the show where I added 8 more... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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