House lighting

[Brad]

I have been wondering why I would not take the caravan concept of led lighting and do the same in the home.
By that I mean 12 volt lighting throughout the house.
Whack in a couple of batteries, charging unit and solar panels on the roof.

Do you reacon the savings in power bills would be worth it?
Do you reacon it would work?

 

[bigman0510]

I have been wondering why I would not take the caravan concept of led lighting and do the same in the home.
By that I mean 12 volt lighting throughout the house.
Whack in a couple of batteries, charging unit and solar panels on the roof.

Do you reacon the savings in power bills would be worth it?
Do you reacon it would work?

I wired a house over on Keswick Island (off Mackay) that was done like this, seemed to work ok. As long as the batteries are good quality I suppose you can get a few years out of them. No power bill would be fantastic!! just have a generator as a backup to charge the batteries.... the whole system would pay for its self in no time.

 

[andrea]

We have a solar system on our house. It will eliminate our bill and give us about $1500-$2500 a year (pending weather). Our payback period is between 2 and 3 years. I think the coast of the sparky installing the lef system would be more expensive than installing a grid connect solar system.

 

[Brad]

We have a solar system on our house. It will eliminate our bill and give us about $1500-$2500 a year (pending weather). Our payback period is between 2 and 3 years. I think the coast of the sparky installing the lef system would be more expensive than installing a grid connect solar system.

We already have a solar system on our house aswell. But the concept of these systems is you give back to the grid. Whenever you turn a light on though you take from the grid. I was interested in what extra saving (if any) could be made if along side that you had a lighting system that was powered from your own power source only.

 

[Capt. Gadget]

Hey Brad I'm Thinking about trying some of these for replacements for my recessed halogen lights
http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/GU10-240...Fans&hash=item27c2baec42&_uhb=1#ht_500wt_1369

If I replaced all my 50w halogens with these 8w LED's 16x 50w =800w 16 x 8w = 128w makes for quite a bit of savings we also have those 275w heat lamps in the bathroom which I remove in the summer because the Kids (and the missus) always use them which does my head in!

 

[cancan]

I just replaced some my gu10's with LEDs... happy with the lights.
Tomorrow I get all the down lights replaced with leds

 

[Deano]

How's this link for the future in lighting.....
Cheers Deano.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/limemouse/lifx-the-light-bulb-reinvented

 

[Jaybird]

I'm considering these for my house. Not 12v but should help with the power Account

http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/B22-5-5W...&otn=5&po=LVI&ps=63&clkid=4030969338154424131

 

[boots33]

Do you reacon the savings in power bills would be worth it?
Do you reacon it would work?

with the low power lights available today lighting generally represents only a small portion of the power bill. So i don't think there would be a huge saving by moving to 12v. As to whether it would work there is no reason why not. When we built our current house about 8 years ago I ran 6b&s througout the roof and twin core feeders to many areas within. we now run around 10 lights off this system from a 20w panel on the roof. 4 of these lights are led downlights that stay on all night which is great as the area where we live has very little street lighting. I also have a few 12v power outlets, one in the main bedroom has a bedside light which is used for reading. The system has been running well for about 7 years and only recently i had to replace the battery. Have a look at the rainbow power company for some ideas.

 

[Brad]

How's this link for the future in lighting.....
Cheers Deano.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/limemouse/lifx-the-light-bulb-reinvented

I need a set of those for the expanda

 

[Deano]

How good was that? Talk about setting the mood. Bit exxy at present.
Cheers Deano

 

[leesy]

I also looked into this a while ago and the advice i was given was these cant be just substuted for the standard halogen ones, these need much lower levels of power.
I was told if you use them the lights will pulse, you need to use one of the 12v transformers for 4 of these LED replacment lights which means a whole bunch of wiring changes to do it correctly.
check with a sparky first i would say!

 

[Coastrunner]

http://www.expandasdownunder.com/showthread.php/337-LEDs/page10


Click on the link above to get the full run down.

After converting my Expanda lights over to LED I was really impressed with just how much less power I was saving.

I thought if I can do this to my caravan, is it possible to do this with my house and get the same sort of savings.

So once again I jumped on ebay and had a little look around and see what I found.

I`ve since converted every light in my house to LED and have now seen a significant drop in my power bill.
Click on links below.

Screw in LED light bulbs.
http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/200-240V-...ht_5292wt_1006

Bayonet LED light bulbs.
http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/B22-5-5W-...ef01e95&_uhb=1

Small lamp screw in LED light bulbs
http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/E14-Pure-...934022b&_uhb=1

Down Lights LED
http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/10x-Dimma...#ht_6598wt_882

Fourescent type Lights 120cm
http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/New-LED-T...ht_2189wt_1170

 

[Bushman]

nothing showing on those links CR

 

[Brad]

I think the links are more than 90 days old.
Would I be right in saying if i searched for the descriptions above each of your links CR that I should find what you are talking about?

 

[Coastrunner]

Standard Fluro light LED replacement. {18Watts instead of 36Watt but still brighter than the original fluro} I think one led could replace 2 x fluros.

http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/2x-T8-18...ans&hash=item3a7c4843b0&_uhb=1#ht_3771wt_1078

 

[Coastrunner]

LED replacement for Screw in Light

http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/200-240V...ans&hash=item1e6cf2b0d6&_uhb=1#ht_5226wt_1006


Replacement in LED for bayonet type light.

http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/B22-108-...ans&hash=item3f1d8ccb3e&_uhb=1#ht_4534wt_1131


Replacement in LED for Down Light.

http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/12-LED-G...ans&hash=item4ab495d639&_uhb=1#ht_3298wt_1131

 

[Coastrunner]

Hi guys.

After converting all the lights in my van to LED, I recently converted all my house lights over to LED as well.

My $500 a month bill became $400, but in that time the cost of electricity had gone up so the saving s was greater.

My 8 x fluro lights were changed over to 4 x LED lights. The LEDs use half the power but my opinion is that they put out double the light so I actually cut my usage down by 75%. Original fluros were 36Watt. Led replacements were 18Watt. Also no starter, just throw it away.

My down lights were 50 Watt each, the LED replacement is 12 watt and slightly brighter

The screw lights are around 5 watts each. I replaced the old 60 watt incandescent and have the same brightness {96SMD}

The same result with the bayonet.

Very happy with the LEDS.

My personal preference was to have warm white, not cool white, but each to their own.

 

[Brad]

Thanks for that. I think I will go the same way when I get into the new house in the new year.