I bought a bunch of bare warm white LEDs to make some undercabinet
lighting but never got them organized. I was just going to glue them to
some lexan strips or something like that, maybe with some aluminum
behind to be sort of a heat sink. I put in some 110V outlets under the
cabinets with 2 USB ports, bought some USB connectors to wire to the
LEDs. I ran some CAT5 in the walls between each bank of cabinets, I was
thinking to put an arduino controller on them for PWM dimming.
If you want to invest a bit of time and very little money you can buy
the LEDs off Banggood, 12V->5V converters, etc. to run them, and roll
your own lights.
--FT
On 2/21/20 9:46 AM, Jim Cathey via Mercedes wrote:
The 12v light bulbs can simply be placed in series on a 24v DC system,
While bare incandescent bulbs can do this, as can bare LED's, sort of,
I doubt LED lighting _systems_ will. (Anything you buy as consumer
goods will be a system of some sort, and not bare LED's.)
OTOH, many automotive-style LED bulbs are rated at 24V directly. (They
are self-regulated, and put out full brightness around 11V. More voltage
merely reduces the current used, and no additional light.) You need to
check the exact specifications to be sure. I ran into this when I was
LED-ifying my camper. LED bulbs are currently about 10x as efficient
as incandescents, even better if you can exploit a directional array, as
I did in the camper's stove hood. (The incandescent bulb was a feeble
joke, only ever used as a night light. The flat-panel replacement was
rated similarly, but as all the light came out one side of the panel, facing
downwards towards the food, it actually throws a decent amount of light.
I'm HIGHLY pleased there.)
What kind of fan is in your hood? If it's the traditional shaded-pole AC motor
with some blades on it, some kind of computer-style box fan, of appropriate
DC rating, will be vastly more efficient. Shaded-pole motors are the _least_
efficient kind of AC motor out there. Add on top of that losses in your
inverter,
and you lose, lose, lose.
Your USB power supplies are 12V (?) to 5V switching down-converters. These
are usually fairly efficient. Our Apple laptops are native at around 20V,
they'll
probably feed directly off 24V just fine. (I've never tried.) The usual
automotive
charger for these is a switching up-converter, so there will be additional
losses.
Potentially, your most-efficient configuration sounds like it might be possible
using a 24V system. You want to avoid additional voltage conversions
wherever possible. If the LED lighting, fan, and laptops are all 24V capable,
you're practically home free.
Two charge controllers on one battery is not good. (How many steering wheels
do you want on your car?) Better to diode-isolate your solar panel arrays from
each other on the feed side of the charge controller. A shaded panel array
simply won't contribute, then.
-- Jim
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--FT
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