Thread: Replacement house lighting

I'm currently running eight 12v x 9W LED's in the lounge room - no transformers, wired through two switches and then directly to a 12v 100Ah AGM battery. Intend hooking up to solar but so far have only had to recharge battery three times in 12 months.

I was surprised at how long they last and am considering converting others that are currently running off transformers to run directly off the battery - then I'll choose an appropriate size solar panel and be independant of the grid as far as lighting goes.

What lights do you have at the moment? Replace the flouro, with a flouro, but try get an electronic ballasted one.

Originally Posted by Xtreme

I'm currently running eight 12v x 9W LED's in the lounge room - no transformers, wired through two switches and then directly to a 12v 100Ah AGM battery. Intend hooking up to solar but so far have only had to recharge battery three times in 12 months.

I was surprised at how long they last and am considering converting others that are currently running off transformers to run directly off the battery - then I'll choose an appropriate size solar panel and be independant of the grid as far as lighting goes.

Our contract auto sparky has done this through his whole house (with panels). When we do our refurb I'm doing the same. In the meantime I replaced all my Fluros with old style bayonet simple light fittings and put in low volt fluro things.

I run a heap of 240 volt LED down lights. They use sod all power, no transformer and are never too hot to touch. They all used to be 50 watt halogens that sucked the power and got VERY hot.

Wit them all on now, I use less power than one of the old ones.. They are a nice warm white colour as well, not that horrid stark white.

I swapped out around 70 x 50watt dichroics for led's in our place, reduced my total wattage down to 630w from well over 3000w.

We just went thru this exercise at work. I was looking at replacing 600 odd fluro tubes with 400 LED.

By the time everything is factored in, it just isn't viable, cost wise.

The recommendation that came back, and as was mentioned above, replace like for like. If you have fluro's now, change them to a newer sort with electronic ballast.

Your running costs will be lower than they are now, and fluro tubes are cheap to replace.

BTW - I was, and am a lover of LED. I was hoping beyond hope, that we could justify LED, but the savings just were not there.

IF you are installing new lights, then by all means, look at the LED options. But to change existing lights, go with fluro's.

Hi,
I've just put in two of these:



Not cheap, but they are for reading lights, run through a normal dimmer, and are simply brilliant.
I got the pure white, as the Mrs does a bit of colour critical craft work.

cheers

These are the ones I got - only cheapies, but I've had no issues yet after 6 months - I would have blown 2 or 3 halogen ones in the same timeframe...

8pcs 240V GU10 12W 4X3W Warm White LED Downlight Bulb Lamp Spotlight Brand NEW | eBay