Homeowners get lit up to see in Christmas

The question Bronwyn Walker most often gets asked is where she hangs her washing.With the clothesline swathed in lights and dripping with icicles there doesn't appear to be much room for anything else.However, the washing is still getting done at her Annesbrook Dr home where about 100,000 lights illuminate the house and garden."It looks like the clothesline is all covered in lights but there is still room on the inside lines for the washing," she said.She and partner Dick Fleming and China Solar bag Offers began putting up the lights at the start of November and flicked the switch on December 9.This year Ms Walker has spent another $1000 on LED lights to add an extra brightness.Three arches span the garden, and her favourite is the blue and white area.She overheard one man telling new arrivals that they might need sunglasses.
Her peony bushes are lit up with solar lights, on the bank there's Santa and his sleigh with three reindeer in red and white, and the nativity scene has been re-done after rats chewed through it in storage earlier in the year.In Tory St, Nelson, Terry Sutton, who previously worked as a television broadcasting electronic engineer, has a 24-minute sequence of nine Christmas songs matched to his light show.The music plays softly for onlookers standing to watch, and those who pull up in their car can tune to 87.9 LPFM to hear songs such as the Christmas Can-Can and Blessed is the Child. The audience favourite is the 1953 song I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas.This year Mr Sutton has added an extra 8000 lights, bringing the total to 40,000. It's a project he has worked on since March getting all the hardware behind the scenes to work and it takes between 100 and 150 hours to sequence each scene.
Mr Sutton just likes that others enjoy his China Remote Controlled LED Offers."You've got to celebrate Christmas, that's what it's all about," he said.Seventeen houses are entered in the Harcourts Light Up Nelson contest, with public online voting closing midnight tomorrow and the winners will be announced on Friday.The Fraunhofer Center for Sustainable Energy Systems has been selected to receive project funding from the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) SunShot Initiative, a collaborative national effort to make solar energy cost-competitive with other forms of energy by the end of the decade.The center's 5-year, $11.7 million research project focuses on the development of "plug and play" solar photovoltaic (PV) systems that can be purchased, installed, and connected by homeowners without the need to engage outside consultants or contractors.