Conserving Power
One major goal for us (and probably many others) is to find ways to conserve battery power. Once we are out in the wilds of the waters, we won’t have unlimited shore power at our beckon call. we don’t have a limitless amount, so we thought a first order of business would be to swap all lighting to LED.
Our girl comes equipped with 10 cabin-lights. That’s a lot! And they are really beautiful when all turned on in the evening. However each one of those lights pulls a whopping 2.5AMPs (26 Watts) EACH! You do the math. That is a total of around 25AMPs of power being pulled. (if you don’t know, that’s a lot!). We did some quick research online to find that the LED replacements that we wanted would cost something like $25/light. Multiply that by 10, well that’s a lot of cash. I hopped on Amazon and found the exact same light’s for only $9.99 ea (or $8/set of 10).
So we saved $120 by shopping on Amazon. And they were delivered 2 days later and work flawlessly. OH and the best part: Each LED light pulls 0.12AMPs (1.2 Watts) for a grand total of 1.2AMPs, instead of 25AMPs. That is HUGE. Simply fantastic.
So you can imagine something as simple as this conversion saves us a ton of power and now we can light everything up and barely pull anything from our batteries. We have 300AMP hours on our current house battery bank. That means we could keep our new lights on for 12.5 days without recharging the batteries (not that we would, but its nice to know!).
We will convert all our running lights to LED, but those are far more complicated to install, so we are holding off until the big re-fit in North Carolina.
I’m also super excited about the six portable mini LED lights. You can stick them anywhere; and let me tell you we have tons of small, dark cabinets and lockers (hello kitchen, bathroom and bedroom) for which they will be perfect! They last nearly forever too and on rechargeable batteries. Plus they are super cute. Its the little things that count, right!
Jill & Jake,
You wrote that one of your major concerns is to conserve battery power. I just saw this on FACEBOOK today. It’s a new, inexpensive device ($2.50) that will make your SMALL batteries (AA, AAA, C or D sizes) last EIGHT TIMES LONGER. However, it will not go on sale until September.
“No Joke: New $2.50 Gadget Makes Batteries Last 8 Times Longer”
Here is the link –
https://www.yahoo.com/makers/no-joke-new-2-50-gadget-makes-batteries-last-8-120545843275.html
this is really cool, Steve! I wonder if they make a gadget like this to make marine-batteries last longer too…
Jake and Jill,
Love following your adventure so far! We have an IP 29 with the same light fixtures. Do you know specifically what LED bulbs you got? We ordered a pack of 20 that looked similar to the ones you got but they came packaged in sets of 10 and they do not work. We definitely would like to replace the original lights!!
Hi Matt & Jess – thanks so much. We used DR. LED’s website to match up our lights with the correct LED version. It has a chart that shows virtually every single light and its LED counterpart. I can’t remember which ones we have off the top of my head – when we have reliable internet I will double check and send you the link. Hope that helps – have fun w/ your IP!!!