The City of Weyburn has begun a three-year conversion of their Christmas lights over to new energy-efficient LED bulbs, with one-third of the bulbs of the new type installed this year.

The new bulbs are more expensive than the older, more traditional bulbs, about four times the cost, but they will last much longer with less breakage.

The new bulbs use one watt of energy to light it, and the bulbs are made of plastic that can fall on the ground and not break; the old bulbs use seven watts of energy, and roughly a quarter of the bulbs have to be replaced each year just from breakage that occurs during storage, removal and installation.

Fire Chief Denis Pilon demonstrated the bulbs' durability to the media on Thursday by dropping one on the sidewalk; the bulb bounced and did not break, and Pilon noted, "That would've been a broken bulb if it was one of the older bulbs."

In addition, the new bulbs have a life of approximately 10,000 hours, which should help reduce the annual replacement costs dramatically.

With the savings in power consumption, this will reduce overall costs in the future. SaskPower does provide free power for a short period of the Christmas season, but the city pays for any lights operating outside of this period.

As the winter months are the highest power consumption months in the province, anything the city can do to reduce this consumption will help put less stress on the overall power grid which is a benefit to all citizens of Saskatchewan and Canada.

An additional feature of the new bulbs, said Pilon, is the clear bulbs have a rotating colour on an ongoing basis. The new "snowflake" decorations on Railway Avenue have these new bulbs, and residents can see the slowly-changing rainbow of colours of the new bulbs.

The city will take about three years in total to switch over all of their bulbs to the new kind, as first the city wants to use up their older bulbs before having to buy the newer LED ones to replace them.