12/240 volt Invertor - low Watt/energy cabin light?

[pongoglo]

I have a Colvic Sailer (Yes - SailER not Sailor!) 29.5 which I keep on a pontoon mooring in Portsmouth at a reasonable rate but sadly without shore power, which at times would be of really great use - as in now - a flat engine starter battery par example? She winters afloat, and I manage to get down about one weekend a month to do all my maintenance, rolling refit and fiddly bits - as one does. I have a 10 Watt solar panel with regulator to keep my batteries topped, but when down rely on on my standard dome type 10 Watt cabin lights, powered by the ships batteries, and backed up by a lamp oil powered hurricane lamp when required. I also have two Invertors which I use occasionally and mainly for my laptop (draws 16 Watts), one a 300 Watt Maplins type, backed up by a 150 watt 'beer can' jobby from Aldi! Recently Ive been running the battery's low however and I believe the cabin lights to be the culprit ( I also have a bilge pump on a float switch, but it comes on rarely). Recently for our flat I found some excellent 1.5 Watt Halogen type spot light bulbs on Ebay to replace the 35 watt conventional type - obviously 240 Volt, and have saved no end of power. Now thinking of doing a jury rig for the boat and running a similar system for the boat via the Invertor. Have tried to find 12 Volt bulbs that would do the same job, but cant find any with anything like the same output in Lummens as my 240 Volt/1.5 Watt Ebay jobs. Anyone any experience or thoughts??

 

[prv]

LEDs.

Lighting a boat by heating up a bit of tungsten till it glows is madness in this day and age. Not sure where halogens fit in, but I know eco-hippies are trying to persuade people not to fit lots of them at home (eg kitchens and bathrooms) so presumably they're not that efficient either.

Pete

 

[fireball]

I did a test of a standard 240v energy saver bulb (10w I think) in a desklamp - and it's current draw through a beercan inverter - it wasn't significantly more than you'd expect and a darnsight less than needed with 12v halogens to achieve the same light level ... so that's what I rigged up - desklamp with energy saver bulb through an inverter ...
Of course, now the 12v LEDs are a lot cheaper it's worth paying out for a few ... do a search on these forums to find out the merits of the cheapo ones vs the "expensive" ones before you decide though.