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This page contains information about my low voltage lighting projects. When I first got my solar setup running I needed a load or way to use the power I was gathering. The previous owner of my house had Malibu landscape lights and I thought they would be great for the purpose. They originally used incandescent low voltage bulbs but they drew so much power I wanted to find something better. Here is a picture of a little 8 LED replacement for the incandescent bulb. They work great so far. I had 4 watt bulbs which drew .3 amps and the LED bulbs draw .018 amps. A very significant savings. Because of this I was able to add a spotlight for my porch and increase the brightness of my Flag Spotlight. I was also able to add the light fixture below which also has LED replacement lamps.
We had this emergency light fixture at work and the electronics had failed. I took it home and gutted it, twisted the wires for the two lamps together, put 8LED replacement lamps in it, hung it under the garage eves and aimed it down my driveway so I could have driveway light. Here is one of the 24LED fixtures. I added a wire with a male RCA plug on it and a switch and use them for emergency lighting around the house when the power goes down. It's not enough to read by but I have no problem seeing our black cat and avoiding him and getting around the house. Next I thought it would be good to have a 24LED fixture mounted to the floor lamp I use in the computer room so I could avoid using the floor lamp which runs on grid power when I didn't need that much light. Again you can't read with it but it provides plenty of light to get around the room in. For the next step I found in the trash a perfectly good floor lamp that was thrown out because the shade was destroyed. I mounted a 24LED fixture to it, screwed a 12 volt compact flourescent bulb into it, changed the switch to one that would turn on the 24LED or the compact flourescent or both on or both off and put a male RCA plug on it so I could plug it into my little low voltage system. Now I have lighting I can read by supplied by my solar setup and off the grid. This is the extent of my lighting projects so far. I will update this page when I think of more lighting projects to do. Home
Please send any comments or questions to: © 2005-2008 B. McGowan
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