I have been considering upgrading my gigging lights and I am looking for some help. I do not feel like my current set up is bright enough. I am running two 75W 12V submersible lights and one 75W 12V halogen all off of one of the largest deep cycle 12V batteries available. I was considering doing away with the 12V lights and switching everything over to 120V and using two 150W halogen work lights that I already have. Though I would love to purchase a 2000W silent Honda generator that is not an option currently. Does anyone have experience running 120V work lights off of a deep cycle marine battery and an inverter? If so what kind of wattage is ideal? What kind of run time are you getting? Any other suggestions on how to get more light and stick with 12V w/o killing the battery in short order?
Lets do the math. A 150 watt bulb draws 150 watts. If you use 4 lights then thats 600 watts so a 750 watt inverter will be fine. So 600 watts power draw across a 12 volt battery will draw 50 amps since volts x amps.= watts. What is the amp hour ratting of your battery? Lets say its a 500 amp hour battery so you divide that by 50 amps and you get 10 hours of use however you need to look at the voltage curve and find that after about 4 hours or 200 amp hour discharge that voltage drops below 11.5 and your inverter will shutdown. So if you plan on gigging for more than 4 hours you will need a larger battery. Hope this helps.
Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he will sit in a boat and drink beer all day. FISH 24/7---- 25 Grady w/ a couple of Gas Guzzling 175 Johnsons “O-SEA-D” the old “Havanadaydream”
http://old.charlestonfishing.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=125540&SearchTerms=gigging
“Nanny Goat” 1980 Malibu 14’, 25 Merc
Looking for a 8-10’ Jon
Thanks Havanna, now the next question how many watts are most folks running on these above water halogens? Could I get by with 300W total and add to my run time?
http://old.charlestonfishing.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=125540
I have a few pics of my set up shown here. I do not have my skiff anymore so if you want to stop by one night and check them out, shoot me a pm. You can use them and see if you like them. I do plan on getting a Jon boat and rigging them up. They worked really well and produced a very white light like a hps bulb.
I used a 2000w inverter and my battery draw was around 7 amps with 5 lights running.
Hydra-Sports 22 Bay Sport
225 Rude
I use two LED floodlights that I got from Home Depot,pricy,but I use them for other things as well.I have a 400 watt inverter but these 2 lights only draw about 80 watts and I can run them all night.For whatever reason I’ve noticed there is very little glare and they really light up the bottom.I couldn’t be happier with them.
Thanks guys, I already have a 400 watt inverter. I will make a trip to HD or Lowes and compare costs between the running the CFLs and buying the globes vs buying the LED floodlights. I like the CFL idea alot since the bulbs are reasonable and easy to change if I bust one running down the river.