Power and lighting
Category : Power and lighting
Published by admin on 27-Jan-2017 02:10
Lights are a thing you should give a little time to , as far as what lights you choose? what power you allow for them and how you power them?
The issue of lights has been a separate mission for us this time around . Our old property had a mix of 12 volt lights and 240 volt very low wattage lights. Sounds like a good mix hey ? but wait ! the 240 lights go out as soon as something else around the property has drained the batteries ! hmmm? yep at the old place we had occasion to be left sitting in the partial darkness , dark because the pump or some other appliance ran the batteries too low for the inverter to keep power happening to the house.
Luckily I had re fitted and wired half the house with 12 volt lights that were powered around the inverter , to avoid them going out because the inverter had chucked a hissy and cut out .. !
The 12 volt lights ran more or less straight from the batteries , so if they (the batteries ) got low and caused the inverter to cut out , the 12 volt led lights would stay on , because they were not sensitive to a slight under volt situation..
This caused me to think carefully about our lighting need here at the new property..
So.... what we decided to do this time is totally separate the lighting from our main 240V system plus to set up separate 12volt systems for each main areas ( buildings) around the property.to avoid a total outage.EVER!.
They are small setups using just one 200w panel with one 200ah deep cell battery running a little 20amp controller for each setup.
Sounds expensive but not really . Not when you understand that the cost for running all the lights everywhere in all building would have cause us to have to up size the main 240 setup if we ran everything from just it.
We , now having set them all up have no chance of loosing everything if just one small component or a major failure of equipment or batteries was to occur.. This is " REDUNDANCY " built in to the design of our power set up!
The division of our power in size is now 3kw for main 240v and one kw for lighting ( broken into 4 small 12v setups ) LED down lights in all buildings so the draw even on each building system is very low.
We suggest these types of lights for your 12 volt lighting needs , if you see sense using a split power set up like ourselves..
No transformers required either .
Super cheap , last for ages , use extremely low power and put out great amounts of light !
The housings are low cost too. We use them everywhere , a pic of our home made ceiling mounts for these light is below :- )
cheers
Steve
to be continued .......
The issue of lights has been a separate mission for us this time around . Our old property had a mix of 12 volt lights and 240 volt very low wattage lights. Sounds like a good mix hey ? but wait ! the 240 lights go out as soon as something else around the property has drained the batteries ! hmmm? yep at the old place we had occasion to be left sitting in the partial darkness , dark because the pump or some other appliance ran the batteries too low for the inverter to keep power happening to the house.
Luckily I had re fitted and wired half the house with 12 volt lights that were powered around the inverter , to avoid them going out because the inverter had chucked a hissy and cut out .. !
The 12 volt lights ran more or less straight from the batteries , so if they (the batteries ) got low and caused the inverter to cut out , the 12 volt led lights would stay on , because they were not sensitive to a slight under volt situation..
This caused me to think carefully about our lighting need here at the new property..
So.... what we decided to do this time is totally separate the lighting from our main 240V system plus to set up separate 12volt systems for each main areas ( buildings) around the property.to avoid a total outage.EVER!.
They are small setups using just one 200w panel with one 200ah deep cell battery running a little 20amp controller for each setup.
Sounds expensive but not really . Not when you understand that the cost for running all the lights everywhere in all building would have cause us to have to up size the main 240 setup if we ran everything from just it.
We , now having set them all up have no chance of loosing everything if just one small component or a major failure of equipment or batteries was to occur.. This is " REDUNDANCY " built in to the design of our power set up!
The division of our power in size is now 3kw for main 240v and one kw for lighting ( broken into 4 small 12v setups ) LED down lights in all buildings so the draw even on each building system is very low.
We suggest these types of lights for your 12 volt lighting needs , if you see sense using a split power set up like ourselves..
No transformers required either .
Super cheap , last for ages , use extremely low power and put out great amounts of light !
The housings are low cost too. We use them everywhere , a pic of our home made ceiling mounts for these light is below :- )
cheers
Steve
to be continued .......