My power outage lights are those
12V 13W florescent worklights Bayco brand.
pros: Cheap, alot of light, draws ~1A, 10ft cord, rocker switch, 12V cigarette plug [which can be easily modified and spliced into the control box.
cons: Not weather resistant at all [hope your roof is still up], not shock resistant at all [hope you don't drop it on tile], designed for light duty [not for frequent outages], 7000K CCT
Power outage is sensed through a couple AC coiled relays, not the most efficient way of doing it but it is the cheapest. Batteries are mainly group U1 UPS batteries, 35AH [C/20]. The bedroom and the garage both has one 35AH battery kept on charge through an
Attwood 1.5A maintainer/charger. After a long outage, I would drag the two batteries out from their storage locations and hook them to my Dual Pro 6A charger [three outputs]. It only takes 2 hours to charge back a 35AH after a 24 hour outage running only a ~1A load. The hardwired florescents has a tail long enough for me to drag it into the bathroom, hallway, or anywhere that needs light. A third 35AH battery is housed in a utility box with handles. It feeds a DC/DC converter that supplies 5V at 3A. With a couple receptacles, resistors, and PTC fuses, the DC/DC converter feeds 5 USB ports, which charges up to 4 AAA/AA Eneloops through the Eneloop USB charger, a homemade Max1811 based Li-ion charger for AW17670/18650s, custom configured one port to charge my Iphone 4S at 500ma/h and one to charge my ipad at 1000ma/h. Assuming all 5 USB ports are occupied, its still only a 1.5A drain... and the 35AH can take a load like this for about 10 hours. It pretty much shrugs it off unless you load it with say... five amps.
In the last five years, we've only had three outages, and only one that gave the batteries a good run for their money. As a result, they have maybe 1/3 of their original capacity, and its a little :broke: expensive to replace at the moment :ohgeez:
