Lead-acid emergency lights—good idea?

Ander111

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Hey guys,

I'm glad to be here at CPF—you really seem to know your stuff!

I want to get a few emergency power-outage lights for our home. I just saw these at Home Depot's Canadian website:

Rechargeable 24-LED Emergency Lantern/High-Beam Flashlight, Set of 2

71AFOxHtaJL._SY355_.jpg


It seemed like just what we wanted—but then I noticed:

"Internal lead-acid battery powers lantern mode for 6 hours on a full charge, flashlight mode for 35 hours"

Lead-acid? Like a car battery? I've never heard of that technology being used—these days, at least—in a standalone light. I doubt they actually slosh around, but still...?

Normally, I'd also be concerned about such batteries overcharging, considering we'd be leaving them plugged in. But the description says:

"Leave plugged into any electrical outlet for charging--turns on automatically if power goes out; doesn't draw power if the battery is full."

So they have regulators that prevent overcharging... Does that make sense to you? Is it reliable?

BTW, even though these have LEDs, I figured this Gen. Flashlight Discussion area was more appropriate for my actual questions.

Thanks for your input (no pun intended). Cheers, A.
 

KITROBASKIN

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Or Absorbed Glass Mat?
It is probably a gel cell lead acid, or two.

Home Depot has good return policies, my experience. The emitters are probably blueish, would be nice to see it lit up before buying if that kind of thing matters to you. The battery type should not be a reason to pass unless weight would be an issue for carrying it around. It can also run on small batteries.
 

iamlucky13

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Lead acid is fine for uses where you don't need to cycle regularly, and don't need much portability.

They actually do best when kept regularly topped off, as an emergency light charger typically does, it sounds like including this one. Alternatively with simpler chargers, they are reasonably tolerant of constantly trickle charging.

The only other point I'd make is to suggest if you're not sure whether these fit your needs or not, you can instead just get a couple the little plug-in flashlights that hang by their plug from an outlet. Energizer has one I see around frequently, and there is also the Red Cross Blackout Buddy that is supposed to be reasonably functional, too.

You could have several of those plugged in around the house, which would provide enough light to find your way around immediately after the power goes out. Then you can use whatever other flashlights (bouncing off the ceiling works well for room lighting) or camping lanterns you have, with a good supply of spare batteries to get you through the rest of the blackout.
 

Ander111

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Hey guys,

Thanks very much for your thoughtful replies—I feel a lot better informed.

So, we'll go ahead and get the L-A lights... Between what you've said here, and the other L-A emergency lights I've seen now, I'm convinced the technology is intentionally used for this application.

Or Absorbed Glass Mat?

Huh? Is that actually a battery type? I'm probably just being dense (LOL).

Home Depot has good return policies, my experience. The emitters are probably blueish, would be nice to see it lit up before buying if that kind of thing matters to you...

I'm usually pretty particular about light temperature. In this case, though, we'll be pleased just being able to see, avoiding falling down the stairs, etc.

The only other point I'd make is to suggest if you're not sure whether these fit your needs or not, you can instead just get a couple the little plug-in flashlights that hang by their plug from an outlet... You could have several of those plugged in around the house, which would provide enough light to find your way around immediately after the power goes out...

I agree. However, the house we've moved into has some rather isolated nooks & crannies—and my wife, having been "caught" in blackouts here a few times now, prefers to have a few lights that come on by themselves.

Thanks again for your help!
 

Poppy

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Personally I wouldn't buy them. I am not a fan of lead acid batteries. After a few years, they won't hold much of a charge, and to replace them you may as well buy a whole new light.

The Home Depot currently has a two pack of lights for $9.88 US.
https://www.homedepot.com/p/Westek-LED-Power-Failure-Night-Light-2-Pack-NL-LUMI-QP2/303196239

They have an electric eye and act as a auto on night light, dusk to dawn. There are three leds in it and as a night light they are warm 3 lumens.
IF the power fails, it comes on brighter... 20 lumens cool white.
It can also be pulled from the outlet and be used as a 40 lumen flashlight.
They claim 3 hour run time. That's plenty of time to find your flashlights or lantern.
 

Timothybil

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AGM batteries are a form of lead acid were the cells have a fiberglass mat between each of the lead plates instead of just liquid, and the mats are saturated with acid. They are sealed and supposedly never need maintenance, which is good because there is no way to open them.
The other types of lead acid battery are the old standard open cell with the little cap on each cell where one adds water (and rarely if ever acid), and the sealed lead acid. Which is similar to the standard lead acid except that all the cells are sealed so one never needs to add water.
 

bykfixer

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Wow! A wet cell flashlight in 2018.

I thought they all 'dried up' when the dry cell was invented in about oh... 1910.

X2 on the gel comment... like some of the military grade car batteries such as Odyssey brand that have more cca and supposedly last longer than the typical car battery. But in a flashlight... yeah, what the heck. Do it.
 
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NoNotAgain

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All of the emergency lighting at work is/was lead acid battery powered.

The good news is that the batteries last about three years before the constant trickle charge cooks them to the point where the battery develops an internal short.

The better news is that the plastic housing become quite dated about the same time giving you reason to replace the light.
 

yellow

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at work - explosion proof needed - we have such lights as emergency wall plug lights.
the good thing (when in charger / cradle) ... when power goes out --> the lights switch on
... and thats it!
I HATE using them.

Compared with any normal sized light, fed with looong shelf life batteries, I see no real point to have them at home,
especially as "emergency lights" that normally see no, or few, use
:thinking:
get something 2*AA and put lithium batteries in

PS: the high beam of that posted light is still incan!
So can :poof:, is not energy efficient and not bright at all (compared to any usual led used now)
 
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ZMZ67

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I am thinking along the same lines as yellow. The shelf life of lithium primaries negates a lot of the value of plug in emergency lights,lead acid or otherwise. There is a plethora of lights available that will run on AA lithiums or CR123s and serve you just as well or better without taking up a an outlet and they will last many years by just replacing the batteries. If you need auto-on there are low cost motion sensor lights that provide enough lighting for navigating the home to get your more powerful lights. I use Dorcy model #41-1076 motion sensor night lights with either AA lithiums or eneloops.
 

Timothybil

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At one time when I still owned a house and the kids were still at home, I tossed around the idea to get one of those emergency lantern things that one sees mounted on the wall in public spaces, with the two lamp heads. At the time, all the ones offered were still incan. I planned on removing them, and wiring up enough LEDs to light up everywhere it would be nice to have light with the power off. I figured that using LEDs would cut the power consumption down to were the battery would last several hours instead of the listed half an hour or so. The advantage I saw was a ready-made, tested unit with the battery, charging circuitry and switching circuitry already done, and by using LEDs I would stretch out the run time significantly. Sadly, I got divorced and foreclosed on before I could actually implement my idea, but I still think it is valid.
Now I'm living by myself in a one bedroom apartment where everything else basically just one large open area. I have flashlights ready to hand in several locations. From my time working in photographic darkrooms, I have the ability to slowly find my way to the closest one without any problems. During the day I have my EDC lights as well.
 

Poppy

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timothybill,
I actually did what you suggested a while back.

Those dual head emergency lights that get hard wired in, or have a plug on a short wire, had two incandescent bulbs, and a 6V 4.5 Ah closed cell lead acid battery. They had a surprisingly short run-time. I don't quite recall, but it may have been as little as 20 minutes. I hot glued one of those 20 led satellite 4* 2AA camping lanterns to the face of the unit, and wired it in place of one of the bulbs, and pulled the other. That way it should have given an 8 hour run-time.

Those satellite LEDs were pretty inefficient and didn't last much more than 4 hours.

After a few years, the lead acid battery wouldn't hold a charge.

A few years back, I noted that the manufacturers switched to LEDs and I thought that they would have exceptional run-times... but NO... they went to NiCad batteries and still had only a 20 minute run-time.
 

broadgage

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I would purchase an emergency light designed and certified for use in public buildings, these should be of better quality than domestic units and are required to run for 90 minutes. These often use sealed acid batteries, and these are readily replaceable.
some units have enough room to fit a larger capacity battery for a longer run time.
 

bykfixer

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Tis better to live in a huvel in peace than a mansion with a quarrelsome wife.

Plus it's cheaper to heat.

Yup, when I was in that period of life a 4xaaa lantern in a corner was my "emergency" light. And a bic lighter put out plenty of light to make those 5-6 steps over to said emergency light.
 

xxo

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timothybill,
I actually did what you suggested a while back.

Those dual head emergency lights that get hard wired in, or have a plug on a short wire, had two incandescent bulbs, and a 6V 4.5 Ah closed cell lead acid battery. They had a surprisingly short run-time. I don't quite recall, but it may have been as little as 20 minutes. I hot glued one of those 20 led satellite 4* 2AA camping lanterns to the face of the unit, and wired it in place of one of the bulbs, and pulled the other. That way it should have given an 8 hour run-time.

Those satellite LEDs were pretty inefficient and didn't last much more than 4 hours.

After a few years, the lead acid battery wouldn't hold a charge.

A few years back, I noted that the manufacturers switched to LEDs and I thought that they would have exceptional run-times... but NO... they went to NiCad batteries and still had only a 20 minute run-time.


I have had similar experience with these lights in a large commercial setting. They are designed to provide about 20 min of light, just enough time to evacuate the building if the power fails. The incandescent versions with the 4.5Ah batteries would provide about 20-40 min. of light. The current Chinese made lead acid sealed batteries are not that great IMHO, the capacity is low and they need to be replaced every 2-3 years on average (we had a few USA made larger versions that were 10-20 years old and still worked!). I think these lights constantly trickle charge so some type of lead acid of NiCd batteries are probably the best bet, keeping in mind that they are not intended to run much more than 20 min.
 

Poppy

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I would purchase an emergency light designed and certified for use in public buildings, these should be of better quality than domestic units and are required to run for 90 minutes. These often use sealed acid batteries, and these are readily replaceable.
some units have enough room to fit a larger capacity battery for a longer run time.
Hi broadgage,
Yes... I have had this discussion before.
Apparently in the UK there is a 90 minute requirement, but in the US ( I don't know what the actual requirement is) the commercial units I bought only ran as XXO mentioned, 20-40 minutes.

Essentially enough time for you to gather your stuff and get out of the building.
 

broadgage

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Most emergency lights for public buildings in the UK are designed to run for three hours. There are certain limited circumstances for which 1 hour or 2 hours would suffice, but almost no one makes an emergency light with less than a 3 hour duration, for the UK market.
I thought that 90 minutes was the American requirement, perhaps my knowledge in this respect is out of date ?

The UK requirement for 3 hours is based on the following. If the power fails but without any other emergency, people may remain in the building for one hour to wait and see if the power comes back on. After that first hour, the premises should be evacuated, allow an hour for this. The last hour is in reserve in case some accident or emergency occurs during the evacuation, a broken leg perhaps, an hour to render first aid, obtain a stretcher and carry the injured person down perhaps 10 flights of stairs.
 

xxo

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I think the newer LED versions will probably run 90 min. with fresh batteries, my experience was with the older incan versions running on single 4.5Ah SLA batteries, during power outages some of the older/weaker batteries would begin die after a little more than 20 min. these batteries would usually need to be replaced as they would not take a charge after this, typical run time was around 40 min or so, brand new batts maybe a little longer. The FD told us to evacuate when the power went out, but there were always some people who would stay (and then complain that all the emergency lights were out when they finally decided to leave an hour later). The lights we had were similar to ones on old 6V lanterns but there were 2 light heads running off of one 4.5Ah battery; one of the reasons, at the time (10+ years ago) incans were still being used is that they were supposed to cut through smoke better. The lights that lit up the Exit sign itself (also running off of the same battery when the power went out) were LEDs. Other LEDs lit up the sign when running off of mains power (these stayed on 24/7 until there was a power cut).
 

sbslider

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Personally I wouldn't buy them. I am not a fan of lead acid batteries. After a few years, they won't hold much of a charge

I saw this sort of comment in a few posts above regarding lead acid batteries.

I have a 7 year old electric lawnmower, black and decker. It uses 3 12V 10Ahr SLA batteries in series. It still cuts the lawn on my 1/3 acre lot (not all grass, but more than 1/2 is grass). It is always on the charger when not in use. Batteries are made in china. This battery is obviously designed for some pretty heavy loads, and when I let my lawn get a couple feet long recently it did take a few charges to mow the whole thing. I am sure stopping the blade on super thick, long grass was not too good for the battery.

Anyway, SLA battery for an emergency light that is always plugged in makes a lot of sense to me. YMMV
 
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