UL Approved LED Christmas Lighting

Underwriters Laboratories® is an independent product safety certification organization that has been testing products and writing standards for safety for more than a century. UL evaluates more than 19,000 types of products, components, materials and systems annually with 21 billion UL Marks appearing on 72,000 manufacturers' products each year. UL's worldwide family of companies and network of service providers includes 62 laboratory, testing and certification facilities serving customers in 99 countries.

 The Energy Saving LED Christmas Light

LED Christmas lights have finally taken root. White House Officials have decided that the White House gets the green light when it comes to LED lights around the National Christmas Tree. LED Christmas lights are said to consume only one-tenth the energy of regular incandescent bulbs. The LED lights around the National Christmas Tree, however, use one-sixtieth the energy, from 125 watts last year to 2.5 watts this year. One aspect that makes LED Christmas lights more efficient than incandescent lights is that incandescent lights use colored glass or plastic to determine the color of light emitted. LED lights, however, are more efficient in that they determine the color of light emitted at the atom level on the chip. And, the White House is not the only high profile government building using LED Christmas lights. For the second year in a row the California State Capitol Christmas tree in Sacramento was lit with 65,000 LED lights and reduced the cost of energy by 98-percent.

 Wholesale/Retail Christmas and Holiday LED Lights

In early 2008, UL changed its standards to reflect the reality that LED strings use very little power well under 10% of the power of incandescent strings. Now, retail strings can be connected up to 210 watts or 1.8 amps. That's 43 strings of 70 retail LEDs or 87 strings of 35 retail LEDs. DO NOT mix LED and incandescent strings. Incandescent strings use over 10 X the power and if you accidentally use the LED standard for incandescent strings, you may overload your circuit.