The Real Running Cost of Permanent LED Lighting
The upfront installation price is the number that gets most of the attention, and reasonably so. But once the system is installed, you will have it running for years, so the question of ongoing electricity cost is a fair one. The short answer is that permanent LED lighting is inexpensive to run, but “inexpensive” means different things to different people. Here is the actual math, using realistic Alberta electricity rates and honest estimates of what a Calgary home draws.
How much power do these systems actually use
Permanent outdoor LED systems like HomeOne-grade installs are low-voltage systems. The fixtures are individual LED nodes mounted in a continuous channel along the eave and fascia lines. Because they are LEDs and not incandescent or even older-style LED strings, the draw per foot of installed lighting is quite low.
A rough working estimate is that a typical installed system draws somewhere between 4 and 8 watts per linear metre of coverage, or roughly 1.5 to 2.5 watts per linear foot, depending on the fixture spec and what brightness and colour mode you are running. At a pure white full-brightness setting, the draw is at the higher end. Running the system at a warm amber for ambient porch lighting on a summer evening pulls considerably less.
What does that mean for a real house? Consider three rough categories:
A compact Calgary bungalow or townhouse with around 80 to 100 linear feet of roofline coverage will typically draw somewhere between 80 and 150 watts total when running. A mid-size two-storey, the kind common in communities like Mahogany, Walden, or Cornerstone with 140 to 180 linear feet, will draw roughly 150 to 250 watts. A larger home with more architectural detail or a longer eave run can push above that, but for the bulk of residential installs in the Calgary area, 100 to 250 watts is a realistic range.
Alberta electricity rates and what they mean in practice
Alberta electricity costs more than the Canadian average, and the rate you pay depends on whether you are on the Regulated Rate Option or a fixed-price retail contract. The energy-only component has varied considerably in recent years, but once you factor in distribution, transmission, and local access charges, most residential customers in Calgary pay somewhere in the range of $0.15 to $0.22 per kilowatt-hour all in, depending on their provider and plan.
A kilowatt-hour is what a 1,000-watt device uses in one hour. A 200-watt lighting system running for five hours uses one kilowatt-hour. At $0.18 per kilowatt-hour, that is 18 cents.
That is not a typo. Running a mid-size home’s permanent lighting system for five hours costs roughly the same as running one incandescent light bulb for a similar period. The cost per night is small enough that most homeowners never notice it as a line item on their bill.
Real annual estimates for Calgary homes
Working through the math with a few scenarios gives a clearer picture.
A compact bungalow running 120 watts of lighting for an average of 6 hours per night, every night for a full year, would use about 262 kilowatt-hours annually. At $0.18 per kilowatt-hour, that comes to roughly $47 per year.
A mid-size two-storey drawing 200 watts for 7 hours per night year-round would use about 511 kilowatt-hours annually, coming to around $92 per year at the same rate.
A larger home pulling 300 watts for 8 hours nightly would use 876 kilowatt-hours and cost in the range of $158 per year.
These numbers assume continuous nightly use throughout the year, which is on the higher end of typical behaviour. Most homeowners run the lights heavily through the fall and winter holiday season, moderately through spring and summer evenings, and occasionally leave them on a dim ambient schedule overnight for security purposes. Actual annual electricity cost for a typical two-storey Calgary home is likely to land somewhere between $60 and $110 for most usage patterns.
None of these figures are precise without knowing your home’s linear footage, your rate plan, and how you actually use the system. But they give a reasonable order of magnitude for planning purposes.
How Calgary’s climate shapes your usage pattern
Calgary’s winter is long by most standards, running from mid-October through to March or April in a typical year. That means outdoor lighting is genuinely useful, not just decorative, for a large portion of the calendar. Evenings turn dark early from November through February, which is when most homeowners get the most value out of the system.
What makes Calgary unusual is not just the length of winter but the variability. Chinooks off the Rockies can push temperatures up 25 degrees Celsius or more in a matter of hours, which is partly why permanent systems need to be built for serious temperature cycling. But those same warm spells also tend to bring clear evenings where the lighting looks particularly good against snow-covered yards and roofs.
In summer, Calgary’s long evenings and intense UV mean the lights come on later and get used less per night, which naturally reduces consumption during those months. The HomeOne app’s scheduling tools make it easy to set a summer schedule that turns lights on after dusk and off by midnight, versus a heavier winter schedule that runs them from late afternoon into the evening.
For Calgary homeowners thinking through the value equation, the electricity cost works out to well under $10 per month on average, and often closer to $5 to $7 for a typical two-storey. That context matters when weighing it against what seasonal lighting costs over the same period.
How this compares to traditional seasonal lighting
The running cost comparison between permanent and seasonal incandescent Christmas lights often surprises people. Older incandescent string lights, the kind still sold at hardware stores, use 40 to 50 watts per 100-bulb string. A full roofline of incandescents on a mid-size home might draw 500 to 800 watts during the weeks they are in use.
LED Christmas strings draw far less than incandescents, but the comparison with permanent systems is still informative. A permanent system running year-round at low wattage, in many cases, uses less total electricity than a single holiday season of heavy incandescent use. Even versus LED seasonal strings, the gap is smaller than most people expect, and it disappears entirely when you account for the fact that the permanent system is actually running year-round rather than for four to six weeks.
The better frame is that the running cost is not a reason to hesitate. It is simply a recurring line item that, for most homes, amounts to the cost of a couple of streaming subscriptions per month.
Variables that will affect your own number
A few things shift the annual cost meaningfully in either direction.
Brightness settings matter more than most people expect. Running the system at 40 to 50 percent brightness for ambient use rather than full brightness for a holiday display cuts the draw by a similar proportion. The HomeOne app lets you set per-schedule brightness, so you can run lower wattage most nights and reserve full output for events.
Zone coverage affects it too. If you install only the front face of the home rather than full perimeter coverage, your linear footage and total draw are lower. Some homeowners start with the front and a garage return and add more later. More about what to expect from a full install is covered in the guide on how permanent outdoor lights are installed.
Your electricity rate plan changes the per-kilowatt-hour cost, sometimes significantly. If you are on a fixed-rate retail contract, your number may be meaningfully different from the estimates above in either direction. Checking your current bill for the all-in rate you are actually paying and applying that to the wattage range for your home size gives a more accurate personal estimate.
A practical way to think about it
The running cost of permanent LED lighting is not the number that makes or breaks the decision for most homeowners. Installation cost is the real gate, and the detailed breakdown of what permanent outdoor lights cost in Calgary covers that more thoroughly.
What the running cost question usually comes down to is whether it is sustainable as a recurring expense year over year. For the large majority of Calgary homes, the annual electricity addition is between $50 and $120, which most people find acceptable once they understand that the system is being used regularly across all four seasons rather than just during the holidays.
If you want a number specific to your home, the most direct path is a quote that includes your actual linear footage. That gives you both the installation cost and a more precise estimate of what your system will draw once it is running.