How much electricity does your sign use?
A square metre of LED-module lightbox draws 11–18 W at a depth of 120–200 mm, and 36–50 W at 50–60 mm. A metre of flexible LED neon draws 8–12 W; a metre of 15 mm glass neon at 25–30 mA draws 11–13 W. Which means the electricity bill is set less by the type of illumination than by the depth of the box.
“What will it cost to run” is the question a business owner asks straight after the price of building it, and usually gets no number for. Here is the number, with a link to the catalogue it comes from.
The calculator returns a range: from the lowest to the highest module density for the depth you pick. Where you land inside it depends on how bright the sign has to be and how dark its face is — we work that out on the layout for the actual product.
Run it for your sign
Put your own tariff in, from your invoice. The default is the regulated floor, and it sits below what you actually pay.
How long the sign is actually lit: all night, until closing, or only after dark.
The default is the regulated floor for Kyiv. Your invoice will be higher: the market component is set daily. Put your own number in.
UAH per month
51 – 123
kWh per month
19.1 – 45.9
Draw
53 – 127W
15–36 W/m² · The driver is included: real draw is about 18% above the sum of the module ratings.
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Table: consumption per unit
Kilowatt-hours a month for one square metre of box or one metre of neon, at 12 hours a day. The driver is included.
| What is lit | W per unit | kWh per month |
|---|---|---|
| LED modules in a box or letters, 30–40 mm — best avoided | 313–313 W/m² | 133–133 / 1 m² |
| LED modules in a box or letters, 50–60 mm | 36–50 W/m² | 15.3–21.2 / 1 m² |
| LED modules in a box or letters, 70–110 mm | 15–36 W/m² | 6.4–15.3 / 1 m² |
| LED modules in a box or letters, 120–200 mm | 11–18 W/m² | 4.7–7.6 / 1 m² |
| Flexible LED neon | 8–12 W/m | 3.4–5.1 / 1 m |
| Classic glass neon | 11–13 W/m | 4.7–5.5 / 1 m |
Where these numbers come from
Not from us, and not from blogs. Two manufacturers publish full depth → pitch → modules per m² → watts per m² tables, and their ranges agree:
- SW Power (Solar Wind Power LLC, Ukraine), the Shine series: at 60 mm depth that is 64 modules per m² at 0.72 W, i.e. 46.1 W/m²; at 120–150 mm it is 16 modules at 1.08 W, i.e. 17.3 W/m²
- SloanLED, the VL4 series with its own density guidelines: converted, 10.7–36 W/m² across the same depths
Nobody publishes W/m for glass neon directly, so we derive it from the Allanson transformer footage chart, which prints input watts and the tube length that transformer carries in the same row. For 15 kV / 30 mA that is 234 W over 60 feet — 12.8 W/m. Two independent cross-checks give 12.7 W/m and a 3% spread.
Box depth is the real lever
The closer the modules sit to the face, the tighter they have to be packed to avoid hot spots. So a shallow box eats several times more than a deep one at the same area and the same brightness.
The extreme case is in the same catalogue: lighting a 30 mm box evenly means modules at a 40 mm pitch — 625 per square metre, over 300 W/m². The difference between 30 mm and 150 mm is tens of times on the electricity bill, for the whole life of the sign.
LED neon and glass neon: what the numbers show
Flexible LED neon is 8–12 W per metre (RGB and high density up to 16). Glass neon, 15 mm at a working current of 25–30 mA, is 11–13 W per metre including the transformer. That is one band, not two classes.
We say it plainly because the trade usually does not: nearly every “15–20 W per foot” figure we found for glass sat on a page selling LED neon. LED neon's real advantages are elsewhere and no smaller for it: 12/24 V instead of 7.5 kV, a damaged segment replaced instead of the whole line, unbreakable silicone, and installation without high-voltage wiring.
One caveat: a 15 mm glass tube is brighter than a 6×12 LED profile, so a per-metre comparison is not matched for brightness. Glass neon driven at 50–60 mA, though, is 21–25 W/m — and there the difference really is twofold.
Why you should enter your own tariff
For a business the price of a kilowatt-hour is not fixed. The regulated components — transmission, distribution, dispatching and the supplier's service — come to roughly 2.68 UAH/kWh including VAT for Kyiv (voltage class 2, August 2026). But the largest component of the bill is the market price of the electricity itself, set daily by the market operator.
So the tariff field holds the regulated floor: your own figure is on your invoice, and it will be higher. Regional spread matters too — for Kyiv oblast the regulated floor alone is around 4.12 UAH.
What this calculator does not count
It counts the illumination, and only that. Left out:
- losses in long cable runs
- a timer or photocell, which usually cuts the real hours
- brightness decay over the years — modules do not start drawing less, they just glow weaker
- a dark face film, which eats light and pushes module density up
And one more thing: these ranges are typical catalogue values for products of this class. Nobody has measured your future sign. The exact figure we calculate on the layout, once size, depth, face colour and required brightness are known.
Sources
The numbers and rules on this page come from here. If a source has changed and this page has not, tell us.
- SW Power (Solar Wind Power LLC), Shine series — the datasheet with its depth → pitch → modules per m² → watts per m² table
- SloanLED VL4 — an independent cross-check of module density at the same depths
- Current/GE Tetra LT — the one datasheet found that prints rated and system wattage side by side; the source of the 1.18 driver coefficient
- Allanson, ANSI Luminous Tube Footage Chart — transformer input watts and tube length in one row; the source of W/m for glass neon
- How a non-household tariff is built: transmission and distribution are set by the regulator, while the electricity itself is priced daily on the market
Checked against the sources on 19/08/2026
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