power outage permanently plugged in light

Hello ladies and gentlemen,

I'm looking for a night light/flash light setup that'll live most of it's life plugged in order to be ready in case of emergency. Amazon is suggesting a few and they look fine to me, but I was wondering if there's something that the community can recommend?

Thanks in advance!

I have the slightly older version of something like this: http://www.energizer.ca/flashlights-lighting/rechargeable-flashlight

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_IUGsJ3KPn0

Another option would be the blackout buddy : http://www.etoncorp.com/en/productdisplay/blackout-buddy-0

The Energizers Wal Mart sells can be found for as little as $5. But lots of stores sell them.
That's the one leanburn showed.

I like the concept, but it has a few problems. Due to a small battery size, the light is only good for a few hours before it becomes drained. But the big problem is if the power goes off in the middle of the night, the main light automatically comes on and runs the battery down, whether or not the light is needed. If they had a model that had a single small LED that would come on automatically, and save the larger output light to be turned on by the user when needed, it would be a much better product.

True, but I don't know of any lights that operate much differently. Emergency lighting found in most commercial buildings and school have finite batteries in them that only last a couple of hours. Even some of our flashlights have modes that put out 10-20 lumens for 5-6 hours and they are done. Bigger capacity batteries like 18650s can go longer, but you pay a premium for them and their charging parameters. For items available to the general public, simple and cheap are the marketplace.

In the end, lights of this nature are just lights enough to help you find the better ones you have somewhere else...for flashaholics, we already have those lights on us or within arms reach at all times.

The Energizer specs suggest to me it has a single AAA rechargeable in it - they definitely weren't even trying for long runtimes. The Blackout buddy doesn't give a brightness spec, so it's hard to tell what it has.

All of the emergency lights I've seen look unimpressive, but sufficient for getting caught in a blackout with no flashlight in reach, making it easier to then go find a good flashlight.

None that I've seen appear to have anymore utility beyond that first 2-3 minutes compared to basically any other flashlight you can find.

Emergency lighting in commercial buildings mainly serves to allow you to evacuate safely, so the limited battery life arguably isn't significant. At home, I could be asleep, but wake up hours after the power goes out or I could come home after dark to an outage and in both cases have a dead emergency light. Then again, I keep a flashlight on my nightstand and one by the door, so I should be covered for both cases.

I have an old NiCad powered emergency light I don't use because it won't let you turn off the night light feature, which is a problem because of the obnoxious blue tint. However, it does one thing I think is a good idea: when in emergency mode, if unplugged / power lost, it dims to probably 1-2 lumens in order to extend the battery life. With power available, or in flashlight mode, it is more like 5-10 lumens.

Interestingly, one of the best flashlights my parents had I was growing up was their emergency light. It had an output roughly comparable to a 2-D Maglite, and pretty good runtime due to a custom NiCad pack. Very different from the emergency lights I see today.

The only really good power failure light I have found is the Streamlight E-Flood Litebox. 635 lumens for eight hours, or 330 lumens for eighteen hours. It uses a 6v 12Ah SLA, and costs around $150. A little bit much for home use. I know the emergency lights one sees in the hallways and stairwells use a little itty bitty SLA, and unless they are relatively new, halogen bulbs. I always wanted to get one, put in some low power 5mm LEDs, and switch to a LiPO power pack. I'm sure it would do much better that way. Before I lost my job and had to sell my house, I had planned to buy one of those, take the lights off of the box, and put a few LEDs in the upstairs hall, in the stairwell, and a few around downstairs. That seemed to make more sense then just lighting up a small area with one of those plug-in jobs. Unfortunately, I never got the chance, and now that I'm a flashaholic, I have more lights ready to hand then I could ever need. [One of the prime indicators of flashaholism.]

Thanks everyone. I think i'll pick up something basic. This is primarily for the wife and the kids. I have a bunch of high efficiency lights stashed around the house, but opening up a drawer is apparently too complicated (especially if i fogot to put the light back there)

I'm investing in some UV Paqlites/Matlite.
I've gone through numerous plug-in emergency lights and they often conk out before they get any real use.
1 even melted.

I been using the "Ideal Security SK638 Emergency Power Failure LED Light" for a few years now, working great.
Amazon price up and down, I brought it for around $35.

A cheap alternative would be to buy some LED tap lights and put them in strategic places so in an outage you can tap them on to light up the area. Having lights come on in an outage typically means that they have some sort of charging system that over time ruins whatever battery is in them and as others have noticed in order to get long runtime at decent outputs you end up with a large battery and high cost.

I ended up buying the Red Cross emergency lights. They come in a double pack. The nice thing about them is that they double as an automatic night light. They are permanently plugged in so eventually the battery will be ruined, as previous poster mentioned. For now thought it's a cheap solution.

eart said:

Thanks everyone. I think i'll pick up something basic. This is primarily for the wife and the kids. I have a bunch of high efficiency lights stashed around the house, but opening up a drawer is apparently too complicated (especially if i fogot to put the light back there)

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Same here. Which is why I have the GE Enbrighten lantern out all the time. Easy to see where it is and turn on as well.

BloodLust said:

I'm investing in some UV Paqlites/Matlite.
I've gone through numerous plug-in emergency lights and they often conk out before they get any real use.
1 even melted.

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The UV Paqlites look like a decent alternative, I don't have much faith in the plug-in lights either. I have so many lights and batteries around the house emergency lighting is not an issue for me but another good alternative is the tried and true 9V Pak-Lite Glow models. The Pak-Lite will run a long time on low even if you are just using alkalines and if the battery is near exhaustion it will still give you enough light to grab something else.On high the Pak-lite provides a quite a bit of illumination for power outage situations.If you really want the "end all" in preparedness you can use lithium 9V for even more run time.

To me the plug-in emergency lights will only become viable when the super cap technology gets to the point that they have a reasonably large capacity. Building a plug-in emergency light with such a power supply would negate the problems of the power storage degrading over time due to constantly trickle charging. We currently have regular caps that can go years of constant full charge without degradation, when super caps get to that point, count me in. [Think anything with a CRT, or amplifiers with tubes and transformer based power supplies.]

A nice 18650 light.

A decent quality two slot 18650 charger.

Two LiFePo4 18650s.

Plug the charger with the batteries into a lamp timer that is only set to turn on for maybe 10 minutes per day, intermittent trickle charger style.

Timothybil said:

To me the plug-in emergency lights will only become viable when the super cap technology gets to the point that they have a reasonably large capacity. Building a plug-in emergency light with such a power supply would negate the problems of the power storage degrading over time due to constantly trickle charging. We currently have regular caps that can go years of constant full charge without degradation, when super caps get to that point, count me in. [Think anything with a CRT, or amplifiers with tubes and transformer based power supplies.]

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To that end, if anybody has had an emergency light plugged in for an extended period of time, it would be a great addition to this thread to mention what make and model it is and how it seems to be holding up.

Checking dates on Amazon reviews, it looks like both the Red Cross Blackout Buddy and the Energizer Weatheready date back to approximately 2010, so there should be some copies in use with quite a few years of trickle charging accrued.

Besides, if anybody has one that old, it would be good to unplug it to make sure it still comes on as expected and runs long enough to let you find another flashlight.

Timothybil said:

To me the plug-in emergency lights will only become viable when the super cap technology gets to the point that they have a reasonably large capacity. Building a plug-in emergency light with such a power supply would negate the problems of the power storage degrading over time due to constantly trickle charging. We currently have regular caps that can go years of constant full charge without degradation, when super caps get to that point, count me in. [Think anything with a CRT, or amplifiers with tubes and transformer based power supplies.]

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For that reason i got some of these LED string lights powered by 3 AA batteries from RTGS. I run at least one set and use it as a nightlight. Even during a poweroutage the lights are still working. A bit hard on the batteries but i use my older cells and swap out the dead ones for new ones. Doesn't even really reverse charge long as your checking all the cells and they stay above 1v. I bought more for my new place so i can turn them on in the event of a power outage. So far i got 5 of them. The string light themselves are pretty flimsy (i had one break on me already) so if you plan on traveling with one it's more ideal to just leave it wrapped up. Still lights up adequately.