Remote Living > Lighting

12 VDC car headlight bulbs for light

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dinges:
Hi,
One use that car headlights may be good for is as diversion load, though I'd prefer to use water heating elements as diversion load.
I regularly use car headlights (12V/55W (5amp)) for testing power-supplies and smaller batteries (e.g. 7Ah). 2 weeks ago I converted an old PC powersupply from 12V to 13.8V (not very easy! involved disconnecting the +5V, re-wiring the stabilization loop (to +12V instead of +5), changing overvoltage protection, etc). Anyway, the PSU should be able to put out 13.8V at 10 amp. Just grab an old headlight (with the dimlight burned out), connect it, 5 amps! Connect another one, 10 amps! etc. One problem: it's difficult to read your DMM with all that blinding light X-)
So, my opinion, they're fine for PSU dummyloads and automobiles. For alternative energy, perhaps as diversion load, but not as main lighting, unless you've got more power than you can use (yeah, right...)
Grtz,
Peter

traviss76:
I was pulling my hair out around here trying to figure out how to lower our electric bill it was 600.00.  So in searching for a way to convert to 12volt lights that was my mom's idea I went through a couple of adapters but they did not have the amp output for the 9004, 1157 automotive lights I was using so I looked around for anything that outputed 10 amps or more at 12volts and what did I find?  Well since you asked I'll tell you I found a COMPUTER POWER SUPPLY that oddly enough outputed +12v, -12v, +5v, -5v at varying amperage.  But the one I needed was +12v at 10amps.

I opened the unit and trimmed all excess wires and left the ground and the +12v and wired it to my lights and they worked and are still working.  I dropped the wattage from 400watts on my lighting to 85 watts with very little noticeability in candlepower.  I think we have another power supply in the shed on a busted computer so I will take it and use it for our internal lighting to replace the flourescent lamps and drop the watt draw from 200 watts to 60watts.  And we all know that that little spinning meter runs at watts per hours.  I figure if we get all 12volts appliances I'll just run them off my computers power supply.  
I had to search for used parts I had here because we are broke.  But a new computer power supply is like @10.00.  Just get the 10amp output version at +12volts.

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