I have no power at my stables, but successfully run electric fencers off old (but serviceable) car batteries. For the winter I've tried running a fluorescent tube and CFLs off a cheapo inverter but they indicate low voltage after not much use. Is that because the inverter doesn't like the CFL load? Would I be better off with incandescents or do I need a better inverter?
TIA
What total lighting wattage? What capacity car battery?
100W of lighting (1 standard 58W tube and a couple of CFLs) will pullAlso car batteries don't like being deep cycled and generally die in short order, die as in lose capacity.
Fencers don't take much power at all.
Its because the battery's going flat. Car batteries dont last used like that.
absolutely no chance
no, you need a bigger and better battery. You might also want to look at small linear fluorescents, which have better efficiency/efficacy than CFLs. Also get mean with the lighting, use a dim general light plus a 5w CFL task light.
NT
maybe a 9w or 11w CFL for the main light
NT
I'm running 30 LED lights off a 12 volt battery, for my fake gas street lamp.
15 LEDs take 2 watts.
Heh.. Not the ones I'm lighting my kitchen with! They're 3W each!
I replaced 2 x 50W GU10 spots with 3 x 3W LED bulbs, and they only had the cool-white then...
Gordon
Sounds interesting. Any chance of a photo? I have a real gas lamp and like the idea, but it seems to run at something way below 1 lumen/watt, which makes it too expensive for any real use.
3W LEDs for lighting are easily found (and they do go much higher).
I would use 12V fluorescents to avoid the inverter losses, such as
You can also buy 12V fluorescents at your local caravan shop. I paid £7 for an 8W.
Another Dave
I bought two 12v units that looked a bit like gas mantles. Here's the lamp. It's actually quite dark out there so it's a 5 second shot:
Didn't know about these. That makes sense, although they are a bit pricey. But since I've got some mains type sockets installed that would be a reasonably easy fix.
Sorry, I really should have given more details. I've got a couple of 9W, a
16W, and a 4 foot tube on a switched spreader so that I can be very sparing with the load. I do know how to do the sums (but I didn't make that obvious!!). The inverter's claiming low voltage after a few minutes use on an ex-diesel battery (80 AH I think) that was used, but still working fine on the car when I retired it. I know about deep cycling and a couple of my other fencer batteries have a dodgy cell, but I think this main lighting battery is still pretty good (it will run a fencer for weeks). I suppose I should stick a few amps load on it and plot the discharge curve with my data logger!My point really was, are some cheap inverters fussy about CFL loads?
Although the simpler answer would be to follow Andrew's suggestion and stick in some "caravan" bulbs.
Incidentally, my search for energy saving 50W GU10 replacements has at last been slightly successful.
I have 5x50W GU10 downlighters in the kitchen. I bought some Megaman 14W ones (I chose the warm white option). Not cheap, about £11.50 each, but I thought I'd give them a go.
The Megaman ones are bright enough and have passed the wife-approval test. They do take a LONG time to reach full brightness - I think the slowest of all the lamps I've tried. They are very fat at the rear and to fit them in the ceiling downlighters I had to bend the spring clippy bits outwards as far as I dared - they were still a tight fit against the springs so I'm not looking forward to trying to get them out again - might have to find one of those suction things.
I've got a couple of other fittings with 4xGU10 so I'll probably get some more. What I really need is for someone to invent 12V CFL MR16 ones as well. I have 9x50W halogens in my two bathrooms and it would be great to replace them with something. Looks like the LED ones are not yet up to the "50W equivalent" level.
The best CFL bulbs we have in the house are the 23W "Feit" ones from Costco. They are the spiral tube type and make a great 100W replacement. Instant on and very bright. I've fitted them everywhere I can except where there are dimmers.
Regards, Simon.
Measure what voltage drops to just before the inverter cuts out.
10.5V is pretty typical - if it's significantly higher, then the inverter is faulty. If the battery is falling to 10.5V in a few minutes of low load, then the battery is dead (or possibly needing maintenance such as topping up, depending on type).Fencer will probably work well on 10V, if the battery has a dead cell.
Not that I've noticed. You almost certainly have to use the VA rating rather than the Watts rating to calculate max load on the inverter though.
Bear in mind these probably don't include any protection against deep discharging a battery, and that can wreck both the battery, and the fluorescent tube control gear. So you probably want to add a deep discharge protection circuit. That would be easy to build if you're in to electronics, or you might be able to get one from elsewhere, such as an alarm system one.
I just bought some 7W ones for someone who moved into a flat with
5 such fittings in the hall. (They originally had blue LEDs fitted, which were completely useless.)Nowhere near at viable pricing.
In the flat mentioned above, there were 4, 6, or 8 of the 50W MR16's in each room (don't know why the hall is mains and the rooms are all 12V). It's rented, so not a lot I could do, but I swapped them all out for 20W wide angle ones (18p+VAT from CPC), and they're going to get some table/standard lamps for their main lighting.
In that flat, each MR16 has its own transformer. If yours is similar, swapping them out for mains GU10 is probably quite easy, and then you could fit the CFLs.
Absolutely agree, and they are the only CFL's with a correct equivalence rating I've come across. I've fitted about 20 of these for different people. Only one failure so far, and that was instant at first switch-on. They do have a run-up time, but the initial output is a reasonable proportion of the final output. Can't yet comment on how long they'll last, except to say none have failed (other than the one infant mortality) or noticably dimmed, and several are in unventilated fittings and probably running very hot. I think I must have fitted the first ones about 2 years ago. Then they vanished from Costco for about 6-9 months, before reappearing again in different packaging.
Yesterday, the inverter wouldn't fire up with a single 9W CFL. Today, when I had my DVM, it worked fine with a 16 watt one. Battery initial voltage,
12.8. When drawing 2 amps, 12.6 v. So looks like a fairly healthy battery to me. I wonder if I have an intermittent bad connection and was losing volts somewhere yesterday.I'm not looking for more than about 20 "watts" out of a 300 watt inverter so I guess I'd be OK even with a nasty load.
Valid point. I guess it might be just such a circuit which is making my inverter fussy. I keep thinking about getting a proper deep discharge battery, but never quite get round to it. Here's protection a circuit for Li-Ion
Does the inverter have a minimum output requirement?
Owain
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