Hi
I asked on the SSCA (Seven Seas Cruising Association) forum about LED light products, and got a reply mentioning the Sensibulb LED lamps. Does anyone here have experience with them?
http://www.sailorssolutions.com/
I live full time on a sailboat and get my electricity from solar power (a wind turbine is on the workbench). Apart from one dome light with an incandescent bulb, all my lights are fluorescent which has a tendency to make me feel like I'm in a hospital.
I was going to make my own LED lamps following the excellent advice given elsewhere on this forum by commanda, but these things look better than anything I could make, not only in form, but in function. At 40 dollars US per bulb, they are not cheap, but not too bad compared to some of the crap that is sold for boats.
A friend of mine recently bought a boat that had LED lamps from Budget Marine. They failed within a couple of weeks. Budget replaced them for free, and the replacements failed within a couple of weeks. The LED's failed in groups of three, so I suspect they just use resistors in series and could not deal with the voltage fluctuations on a boat.
For me, there are two sides to living off RE. It is of course important to be independent, but even more important is to avoid the noise, smell and heat from running the inboard diesel in my yacht for the purpose of charging batteries. Imagine having your diesel genset sitting in a cupboard in your living room....
Comments welcome.
PS. The discussion on the SSCA forum is here:
http://64.70.221.24/DiscBoard/viewtopic.php?t=2851
Regards,
Owen Morgan
Yacht "Magic"
Falmouth Harbour anchorage, Antigua