DC Lights, Timers & PIR Sensors

Low voltage lights offer significant benefits for smaller off-grid power systems.  Powered directly from the battery bank at 12 or 24V DC, they avoid the need to run an inverter all night just in case someone needs to turn on a light. This eliminates the inverter losses, as well as the quiescent power draw of the inverter itself.

Efficiency can be further optimised by ensuring the lights only run when they need to. This can be achieved through the use of DC powered PIR motion sensors and/or timer switches, which both avoid the lights being left on by mistake. Another advantage of the PIR sensors is that they can be set to only turn on the lights only when it's dark.

Low voltage lighting is also widely used in vehicles, especially in boats, caravans and motorhomes where efficiency is critical due to limited battery capacity. Changing older halogen lights for LED bulbs can make a huge difference to the load on the battery bank.