Here's How Much It Costs To Run Christmas Lights In Pennsylvania

PENNSYLVANIA — Whether you choose incandescent or LED lights, there is a price to power your festive displays and the folks at Simple Thrifty Living have calculated it for every state in the Union.

In Pennsylvania, the average for a month of operation was $17.36 for a traditional, incandescent display. That cost drops steeply to $5.79 for LED powered holiday cheer.

The website noted Hawaii has the highest price for running incandescent Christmas lights for the 34 day time period. In turn, adding $46.62 to Hawaiians' electricity bill during the holiday season.

Homeowners in Louisiana will pay the least to run their holiday light displays, a total of only $13.94. The cost of running lights is above $20 in 14 states. The national average for running an incandescent light display is $19.81.

So Pennsylvania is below the average when using incandescents.

The national average for running an LED light display is $7.16. Given that the electricity rates are the same, Hawaii also has the highest LED light total at $16.36 and Louisiana the lowest at $5.04, the site said. For most of the country coming, the cost to run the lights comes in below $10.

The Keystone State beats that with an average of $5.79

How they got the estimates:

They estimated the number of light strands needed to cover the average 2,700 square foot home. Estimating there would be between 80 and 100 feet that would face the street and require light coverage. Using those numbers, we found that ten 68.5 foot light strands would be needed, six would be used for the home and four for bushes or trees in the yard. We calculated the use of both LED lights and incandescent lights. To round out the imaginary display, they added two inflatables, a Santa and a snowman. They used the product description of each item to determine its power usage and converted it to kWh.

They estimated that the lights would run for seven hours a day and be up for a total of 34 days, the day after Thanksgiving through New Year's Day.

To complete the calculations, they used the government's average for residential electricity rates in each state and multiplied the kWh hours by those rates.

They also broke down how much those inflatables would cost to use in Pennsylvania. The Santa gobbled up the most cost at 43 cents, with the snowman costing 34 cents.