liteningbug
Newly Enlightened
- Joined
- Jun 26, 2014
- Messages
- 28
If I have multiple copies of the same light that has multiple modes of brightness, how do I best maximize their runtime and provided brightness: in series, or in sequence?
To clarify by example: Assume we have 3 Streamlight Siege lanterns. Each runs off of 3 D batteries, and its manufacturer ratings for each mode are: High (340 Lumens/30 hours), Medium (175 Lumens/70 hours), Low (33 Lumens/295 hours). Let's assume each is topped off with fresh batteries, but we have no spares to recharge. A power outage occurs and we want to provide bright cheery light for as long as we can so that people can see well enough to eat, read, or play games in a small common room--we will assume that while the outage will be an unknown amount of time to fix, it is not a true emergency situation and we don't want people to have to curtail their normal activities by going for a true maximum runtime of only a single lantern on low.
Considering that power consumption per lumen increases linearly but perceived brightness per lumen only increases logarithmically... and that running multiple lanterns at once means the batteries are being consumed at 2 or 3 times the rate... is the better option to accomplish this task going to be having all 3 lanterns set on low (and, I expect, evenly spread throughout the room), or having a single lantern set on medium or high (which could be alternated among the 3 to rest the batteries) set/hung in the center of the room?
Or to phrase it more simply and generally: is it more efficient to run a single light more brightly or to combine multiple smaller lights to produce the same amount of perceived brightness?
To clarify by example: Assume we have 3 Streamlight Siege lanterns. Each runs off of 3 D batteries, and its manufacturer ratings for each mode are: High (340 Lumens/30 hours), Medium (175 Lumens/70 hours), Low (33 Lumens/295 hours). Let's assume each is topped off with fresh batteries, but we have no spares to recharge. A power outage occurs and we want to provide bright cheery light for as long as we can so that people can see well enough to eat, read, or play games in a small common room--we will assume that while the outage will be an unknown amount of time to fix, it is not a true emergency situation and we don't want people to have to curtail their normal activities by going for a true maximum runtime of only a single lantern on low.
Considering that power consumption per lumen increases linearly but perceived brightness per lumen only increases logarithmically... and that running multiple lanterns at once means the batteries are being consumed at 2 or 3 times the rate... is the better option to accomplish this task going to be having all 3 lanterns set on low (and, I expect, evenly spread throughout the room), or having a single lantern set on medium or high (which could be alternated among the 3 to rest the batteries) set/hung in the center of the room?
Or to phrase it more simply and generally: is it more efficient to run a single light more brightly or to combine multiple smaller lights to produce the same amount of perceived brightness?