Keeping alive these many lights of Christmas

It was the second time this Christmas season that NStar workers had paid a visit to Dominic Luberto's house in Jamaica Plain. The first time, they installed a special high-capacity electric transformer to supply enough juice for the sea of lights that were draped on his house and yard. This week, they came because he had blown out a cable.

Frenetically adding new lights and displays to a yard that was already attracting gawking onlookers, Luberto had almost doubled his electricity demands; Tuesday night, his power system shut down, and the massive display went dead from 10 p.m. to midnight.

NStar workers were soon on the scene, installing an even bigger power line, one usually reserved for buildings with at least four apartments.

"It's our job to make sure our customers have reliable electrical service," said Caroline Allen, an NStar spokeswoman.

"And if they need more power, it's our job to make sure the equipment is there to provide it," Allen said.

Luberto's display now consumes almost $2,000 in electricity a month, Luberto said, 20 times the average bill. Every night, crowds gather in front of the house, bathed in the glare of more than 250,000 lights.

There are reindeer on the roof, elves on the lawn and enormous snow globes with winter scenes. Traffic piles up on the nearby Arborway. People stare in a kind of stunned amazement.

"It's getting out of control," one neighbor said.

Some neighbors, already irritated by the nine hours a day of glare emanating from the house, say the lights in their houses sometimes grow dim or go out completely, and they blame this on the blazing lights of their neighbor.

NStar said those could be unrelated to Luberto's display.

Luberto, who thinks of his display as a mission to spread love and cheer, is undaunted.

"We hang in there; we move forward, no big deal," he said.

Luberto, 55, started out with an impressive display, along the lines of the hodgepodge effort put forth in Chevy Chase's "National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation." But Luberto is now on the verge of celebrity. He was featured in USA Today, as well as the Hattiesburg American in Mississippi. Inside Edition has had him on, and the Spanish-language station Univision plans to come to his home today.

"The entire nation knows me," he said recently, adding that he is thinking about publishing a book about his experience.

Allen, the NStar spokeswoman, said Luberto's use of power would not affect electricity rates because he's not using enough to draw them up, and the company this year locked into a set rate for the next seven years. She declined to say how much the equipment for Luberto's system cost, but said it probably would not affect ratepayers. "It's just the cost of doing business," Allen said.

At the start of the new year, Luberto said he will take down the lights and dispose of them. He'll start anew next year, and he's already making plans for more. He wants to up the ante to 500,000 lights, and he's also talking about doing a daily fireworks show on his front lawn.

Matt Viser can be reached at maviser@globe.com.