Post 31A: LED Lights Save Power!

LED Lights Reduce Battery Consumption and Heat

As we mentioned in our earlier post Off Grid Living, we are still researching ways to reduce our needs when dry camping. LED Lights are our latest discovery.

Currently we have a full hookup site, however when we start traveling again, our hope is to boondock (dry camp) as much as possible over the winter months.

As our previous post mentioned, we have solar panels to replenish our batteries, but if we can reduce our battery consumption why not?

LED Lighting will help reduce the draw on the battery and will also reduce the amount of heat generated by the incandescent bulbs.

Fortunately, most of the lights inside our trailer are already LED with the exception of the dining area overhead lighting and the light in the stove vent hood. We went to a local RV dealership to see if we could replace the C931 incandescent bulb with a LED version and the answer was yes. They sell replacement LED bulbs.

LED Light options

We found out there are many styles of LED Lights, in the situation, for our lamp

Needed a vertical bulb to fit our overhead light in our dining area
Overhead light in dining are

over the dining area, we needed a LED Multi-directional Radial Tower Bulb with a Wedge Mount Connection.

Vertical LED replacement unit for a 921 incandescent bulb
Vertical LED

Installation was easy, simply remove the old bulb by pulling down and then insert the new LED light the same way you have inserted the incandescent bulb.

For the typical ceiling flat dome lights you would

Dome bulb replacement kit
Dome type LED
LED kits are available to update dome lights
Dome light

get a bulb kit that looks like this. In this particular kit, there are 6 replacement bulbs.

To replace the old bulbs is easy. Remove the old bulb by slightly depressing the bulb and twist it so the notches line up and pull it out. Then take the socket part of the LED kit and insert it into the dome light (similiar to how you removed the old light). Then take the LED ‘bulb’ and insert it into the slot.

Kit to replace incandescent bulbs with LED Bulbs
Dome light LED

The bulbs we purchased have a 10 year warranty.

 

LED Light vs Incandescent bulbs

It was a bit difficult finding out the specs, but after poking around the internet for a while, here is what we found. Here is a comparison chart on the wedge 921 bulbs we replaced vs the incandescent version.

Bulb Type Watts Amps Lumens Service Hours
LED 2.1 .4 215 40,000 – 60,000
Incandescent 18 1.4 263/105*1 1000

*1: According to the information we found, the initial Lumens of an incandescent bulb is 263. After slight usage it drops to 105 Lumens.

In summary, we changed 2 bulbs, now we only use 4.2 watts of power instead of a whopping 36 watts! As a bonus, the LED Light will last 40 to 60 times longer. As you can see from the numbers, they are brighter.