Florescent

Florescent lighting is close to the efficiency of LED lighting at much lower cost. Over the past few years I have been attempting to use the Home Depot's 12 volt battery operated (8 AA cell) florescent light (sells for about $10) and adapting it to work with 12 volt battery source. This is done by soldering a wire to each of the battery terminals and running this to a 12 volt battery. The bottom line is it doesn't work for very long. Any voltage approaching charging voltage of about 14.5 volts will burn out the unit in short order. Turn on charging generator with the light on and the unit is typically toasted.

I have now found a much more cost effective solution. It is a simple unit of an 8 watt florescent tube inside a plastic tube for protection, circuitry to create the proper voltage to light the tube, 14 ft of wire leads, and clip leads to attach to 12 volts. It is designed to work on 12 volts while the battery is charging. There are several places this 12V work light can be purchased at also. Search for "chil298". It currently can be found for:

$3.33 at http://www.mattstools.com/product_info.php?products_id=541

I purchased my units locally for $2.60 at a whole sale tool place. I found the unit to use about 3.5 watts when new at 13 volts. After one month of continuous use at 13.1 volts, it draws a maximum of about 4.8 watts to 6.5 watts. At 6.25 volts it easily starts, runs, and uses between 1.9 watts to 3.6 Watts. I added a simple on-off switch in series and it becomes a highly practical low wattage, cost effective, survival task light for your base camp. I recommend stocking up on many of these units for your survival site. A typical 12 volt screw in florescent bulb is of the order of $20 or more.

Doing more testing of this cost effective 8 watt 12 Volt florescent light, I have found that a fully assembled light running full time at 13.1 Volts DC will last about 1,050 hrs. If one pulls the printed circuit board with the heat sink transistor half out into the open air so it gets better cooling then the unit lasts about 6, 400 hours. The rubbery end will easily slide off and one can gently stretch the wires so that the printed circuit board is half exposed to the cooling air. I let it sit like that for months. The unit then lasted about 6 times longer. To expose the PC board to more air becomes practical if the unit is mounted to some survival structure like a wall or ceiling.

The average wattage used over the time frame was 5.63 watts for the light with the enclosed PC heat sink and 5.44 watts for the light with the half exposed to air cooled heat sink. There is a tendency for the unit to draw a bit more wattage with time and put out less light than when new. This is normal and expected with all fluorescent lighting. I also noted that the in the end the solder melted on the PC board and one of the lead wires came loose when these units finally stopped working. In other words the PC board got so hot the lead wire popped off. I temporally reconnected it and the unit did not light. I suspect the bulb may still have some life to it but the PC board to be toasted. I also believe if one slides the bulb in the tube a bit and exposes more of the PC board that possibly even longer life may be possible.

Offered by Mike.