LED bulbs rule, illustrated.

I got to playing around with something last night, since at the moment the Lair sports working examples of the three main types of lightbulb.

I used to use Compact Fluorescent bulbs exclusively, because while LED bulbs with standard sockets existed and pulled like half the wattage, they cost three times as much. That has changed in the eight years of the Lair’s existence, and so now the only 120v CFLs in the cabin are the ones in sockets that just don’t get used much anyway. Spending money unnecessarily is a sin, unless it’s for fun things like alcohol.

But virtually the very first off-grid life lesson I learned upon moving to the gulch, the very first morning when I killed my hosts’ inverter with one, is this:

A demonstration below the fold:

Here’s what my voltage readout said at 5:30 this morning, with nothing on:

Here’s a standard desk lamp wired into my 12v lighting circuit, with a 60w equivalent LED bulb that pulls maybe 7 watts:

And here’s what happens to the voltage in the two Interstate batteries that directly power the lighting circuit when I turn it on:

And here’s the cool undershelf LED my brother sent me, which I put in the kitchen corner…

Okay, that’s mostly a roll of paper towels, but the bar of light above it is coming from the cool etc. He’s sending me another for the bedroom reading lamp.

And here’s what that lamp does to the voltage…

My new LED bulbs haven’t arrived yet – and look to not arrive, now, until sometime early next month. Monsoon has been playing hell with care packages. So I rummaged around in the powershed and found the 12v CFLs I’d stored there. Put one in the new bedroom addition…

Something less than 15 watts, I don’t remember. The batteries at least have the decency to notice that one…

Now here’s the circuit I wired for the new closet. I ran out of wire four feet short and didn’t feel like putting up a temporary socket, so I used one of those little 12v incandescent RV lamps someone sent me recently.

Aaaand…

Blammo! I was surprised. I expected a hit, but the laptop and satellite modem didn’t used to pull the Interstates down four tenths of a volt from the moment I threw the switch.

As I wrote several years ago, electrical gadgets that waste a lot of energy making heat are power hogs to be avoided in off-grid applications.