\t\t\t\tLandscape lighting systems consume electrical power.\u00a0 And alas, electrical power costs money. Therefore, unless money is no object, it\u2019s reasonable to ask how much it costs to power a landscape lighting system. Obviously, any homeowner thinking of having a system put in should perform this due diligence. Likewise, since we\u2019re going to base our math on LED bulbs, a homeowner thinking of converting from halogen should, too.<\/p>\n
Naturally, the most exact estimates need to take into account a slew of factors which are beyond the scope of this discussion. Nevertheless, we can reach a useful figure for landscape lighting power costs by making a few simple assumptions.<\/p>\n
First, there\u2019s the price of electricity. In the Houston area,<\/a> rates range from 9.5 cents to 10.4 cents per kilowatt-hour.\u00a0 Those are what a customer is charged to draw 1 kilowatt for one hour. Incidentally, the national average is more like 12 cents.<\/p>\n Next, there\u2019s the amount of power a landscape lighting system consumes. This is mostly determined by the number of bulbs in the system. In addition, transformers are not perfectly efficient, so a little more than X kilowatts have to go into one to get X kilowatts out. Since this loss is very small for modern electronic transformers ( up to 300 watts) we\u2019ll set this aside. \u00a0There\u2019s always some additional loss due to wiring, but it\u2019s minimal so we\u2019ll ignore it.<\/p>\n Finally, we have to reckon how many hours, on the average, the system will be lit each 24-hour day. Dusk to dawn is a\u00a0 reasonable mark.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s calculate the basic power cost, then, for a system with 15 15-watt LED bulbs on a 300-watt transformer.\u00a0 The bulbs draw a total of 15 x 15 or 225 watts. Over 12 hours, then, they\u2019ll use 2.7-kilowatt hours. Over 30 days, 81 kilowatt-hours. \u00a0At 9.7 cents per kilowatt-hour, the bill would be about $7.85 per month. \u00a0We could round that up to $10 for transformer and wiring loss to be conservative. Naturally, transformers with add-on devices like timers and digital controllers use some power even when the lights are off.<\/p>\n There\u2019s a handy online calculator<\/a> you can use to estimate consumption and costs for any landscape lighting system you have in mind. \u00a0You can use also use it to \u201caudit\u201d a system you\u2019ve already\u00a0installed. Still in the halogen era? Thinking of converting to LED<\/a>? If so, \u00a0it would be very instructive to use the calculator\u2019s LED comparison feature. The projected savings in your landscape lighting power costs will probably please you greatly.\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Landscape lighting systems consume electrical power.\u00a0 And alas, electrical power costs money. Therefore, unless money is no object, it\u2019s reasonable to ask how much it costs to power a landscape lighting system. Obviously, any homeowner thinking of having a system put in should perform this due diligence. Likewise, since we\u2019re going to base our math…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1215,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,5,20,10,1],"tags":[45,46,47,48],"class_list":["post-1209","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-commercial-lighting","category-landscapes-lighting","category-outdoor-lighting","category-residential-lighting","category-uncategorized","tag-commercial-outdoor-lighting-costs","tag-lighting-costs","tag-outdoor-lighting-costs","tag-residential-outdoor-lighting-costs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/houstonlightscapes.com\/resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1209","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/houstonlightscapes.com\/resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/houstonlightscapes.com\/resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/houstonlightscapes.com\/resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/houstonlightscapes.com\/resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1209"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/houstonlightscapes.com\/resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1209\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/houstonlightscapes.com\/resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1215"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/houstonlightscapes.com\/resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/houstonlightscapes.com\/resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/houstonlightscapes.com\/resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}USAGE<\/h3>\n
CALCULATE LANDSCAPE LIGHTING COSTS ONLINE<\/h3>\n