Prepping 2 Selecting Light Sources

Selecting light sources for a meltdown situation can be tricky for a beginner as no one type or style of light fulfils every need or every requirement unless you live in a cave so we will look at the different types and styles of lights to suit your particular requirements and it is really quite simple with a little education and thought.
We will break lighting down into two main types such as torches which are directional and lanterns which are omnidirectional and work from there, and specifically you begin with your main living room in a meltdown situation along with your kitchen as this is where you will cook and prepare food as decent lighting is a necessity in these places. As a guide you need around 500 lumens to light a room which is 13’ x 13’ or 4m x 4m with sufficient light to do most things and this assumes it is an omnidirectional light in, or near to the centre of the room. Most LED lanterns fit the bill and you have massive choices as they can be dry cell or wet cell or rechargeable and they will all fit the bill and do the job and if you have a basic solar charger the rechargeable are possibly the best option as they often give the longest run time and most come with a holder to fit dry cells so you can recharge your battery and still have light. Some rechargeable lanterns have an inbuilt battery instead of a removable battery and you have to plug the light into a charging cable so you lose the light while it is charging, it’s a call you have to make as to the amount of flexibility you want.

You can take this a step further and utilise a 12 volt automotive or leisure battery and either build your own lighting or simply get a 12 volt lantern and plug it in to the battery or make a simply lighting festoon which runs around your home with appropriately placed sockets to plug your lights into. Why 12 volt? because it is an automotive standard there are everything from lights to switches and even cabling available readily and cheaply.

Kitchen lighting also needs to ideally be a lantern with omnidirectional light so you can see to cook and prepare food and if you have a camping cooker you need to see where to turn it on and light it with matches or a lighter, or to see the ignition switch if it has one, you also need to see what you are cooking and when you serve it along with heating water for washing up and actually washing up and drying the pots.

Work lights are generally LED chips and rechargeable batteries in a holder which unfolds and you simply turn it on and you get light and the problem with these is you have to continually move them as they are generally directional light along with their relatively short run times before they need recharging, assuming you have the means to recharge them.

Torches come in many shapes and sizes and we will begin with a basic torch as these are simply a battery and bulb and the bulb has been superseded by the LED as this gives more and better light with much longer run times and as a cheap pocket torch they are ideal for everyone to have and keep a couple of spares. These are fine for temporary light and having a fixed focal length keeps them simple and ideal for normal functions such as going to the toilet where you may need to look for the toilet paper or wash your hands, these torches should be small enough to fit in your mouth if need be to give you light and both hands free.

Larger torches have larger or more batteries and generally longer run times and at least a couple of these torches are handy and ought to be kept in convenient locations so people can grab them if they are needed such as shining down a long garden to look for potential intruders. Forget the very large spotlights which are generally rechargeable and boast 25,000 lumens at 500 metres range as generally they use a halogen bulb and have run times of less than 5 minutes and take hours to recharge, so are not really suitable for a meltdown situation.

Head torches are usually dry cell or rechargeable and are a very useful addition to any lighting box as you wear them on your head and they leave both hands free so you can go out to a generator if you have one and start it up in the dark, or you can go and fetch wood from your outside store and bring it inside until you need it; head torches are the multi tool of the torch world.

Tactical torches moved the torch game on a few paces as they swapped the fixed focal length torch by adding a zoom facility which basically moves the reflector and this alters the focal length so with it fully zoomed in you get a wide beam of light for a short distance or zoom out and you get a very long and narrow beam reaching several hundreds of metres. These are the ideal security torch as you can illuminate a confined space and a long distance and they are the ideal deterrent as you can shine them through a window and down a garden to scan for burglars, or just look at a shed or garage door to check for intruders.


Batteries?

Many lanterns and torches now come as rechargeable torches or where you remove the lithium battery to charge it and most have the advantage of also having a dry cell battery holder so you can also fit dry batteries to them while the lithium battery is recharging, it is this kind of flexibility which is very useful in giving continual light as if you have a basic solar system most charge controllers now come with a USB port to charge batteries and devices.
If you have a lot of rechargeable lithium powered lights it is recommended you check the battery type and standardise as the 18650 is the most popular type and I suggest a spare lithium battery for each appliance and you keep them charged ready for a meltdown situation and as one goes flat you can recharge it from your basic solar set up. What size spare batteries? In simple terms many sellers on popular sites simply lie about their batteries capacity and some boast about having 10,000 milliamps which is a lie as testing revealed they have less than 2000 milliamps, the realities are they batteries of that size can hold a maximum energy density of around 3600 – 3700 milliamps and the brand leaders all have them in those capacities.

Standard dry batteries are generally a maximum of 1500 milliamps.

Never dismiss Nicad or NmHd rechargeable batteries in AA or AAA sizes as while they may only have a voltage of 1.2 volts as compared to the dry batteries 1.5 volts, they have a much larger capacity and while the majority are around the 3500 – 5000 milliamps range, these are the large capacity rechargeables with reasonable prices and get over 5000 milliamps and in the 7000-10,000 milliamp ranges they get prohibitively expensive and require specialised charging equipment or take a long time to recharge. Many appliances within the dry battery lighting sphere claim 3 X AA dry cells which equals 4.5 volts in series and 3 X rechargeable cells are 3 X 1.2 volts or 3.6 volts, so why is this important? Because they are slightly down on voltage they compensate by using slightly more current or amps to give the correct wattage.

Some have other conditions and generally these are fitted with low voltage LED drivers and these often have a voltage range input and this may be 3.5 – 6 volts and your three 1.5 volt dry cells are 4.5 volts and your three rechargeable batteries are 3.6 volts and also within the LED drivers working range, while others have a limiting input voltage so what exactly is this.
Generally it is a voltage regulator which can be a basic manual type or the all singing and dancing electronic type which puts out 3 volts and has a working voltage input range of around 3.2 – 15 volts meaning you can use dry or rechargeable batteries and you still get the 3 volts output to the LED strip.

Balancing your batteries out is crucial so you have sufficient dry batteries and rechargeable batteries to suit your needs and requirements and I suggest the cheap shops for your dry batteries as they charge around £2 for 20 AA batteries near me and this equates to 10p per battery while the top branded battery costs £7.99 for a pack of four batteries which equates to £2 per battery so you do the maths. I tested the Kodak brand against Duracell and found the Kodak brand only lasted half the life of the Duracell brand but cost 1/20th of the price, so why is this important? Because you store these dry batteries often for long periods and often you have to throw them away to rotate them and losing £2 against losing £8 is a no brainer, particularly if you are on a budget.

One thing omitted until now is the wind up torch or lantern and these are extremely useful as you don’t need batteries and to remember to rotate batteries and to change batteries as they either wind up with a cranking handle or have the trigger like a gun which you depress to make the internals rotate to charge either the internal capacitors or internal batteries and I always recommend one if you can afford it as the saving comes in batteries. These lights break no pots in terms of working life or performance and their beauty is that they are simple and their simplicity is the key as they can be used anytime or anywhere and they never run out of batteries.

Designing your battery strategy is critical and this is where routine testing comes in as if you run a meltdown scenario as a routine it gives lots of vital information on run times and recharging times as these can be critical to provide lighting, so let’s look at the scenario we have. If you have a lantern which runs for 4 hours per night on dry batteries and it has a run time of 8 hours you know you need a set of batteries every 2 days if this is summer and it gets dark around 9.30pm and you go to bed at midnight you need 2 ½ hours of lighting per night and your batteries last three nights, in winter it all changes as it may get dark at 3.30pm meaning you need 6 ½ hours of light a night, or a set of batteries every day and if you multiply this by your lights you need that amount of dry batteries.

Things change with rechargeable batteries in either AAA or AA sizes and if your rechargeables are 4500 Ma and dry cells are 1500 Ma they should last three times longer; wrong as they are only 1.2 volts and use more current to compensate and I would suggest rating them at 2.5 times the working life to be certain, so now comes the issue. When you recharge them you must be able to recharge them faster than you flatten/use them and this is where the issue arises as you may be able to recharge them faster than you use them in summer when you plug your charger into your charge controllers USB port with full sun, but what about winter when your basic solar doesn’t perform anywhere as well. This is what a shakedown test reveals as it gives you actual run times of dry batteries and rechargeable batteries in actual working conditions and the recharging times for that time of year which is why we run shakedown tests in winter and summer.

Rechargeable lithium batteries are a different matter as they are rated at 4.2 volts maximum with an average 3.7 volts and the actual issue is that to charge them you often draw more current from your solar panel for longer, so why? They are the same capacity as a rechargeable AA battery but its getting the full voltage into them which takes the time and why they need more time in their charger than a rechargeable AA battery.
Therefore the ideal theoretical combination is a rechargeable lithium with rechargeable NiMh if you have a dry battery holder and it will work with rechargeable NiMh with their reduced voltage as the NiMh work longer and this meant more recharging time, particularly in winter. You need to get this right as the limiting factor is often winter charging where the basic solar system is at its lowest output and your lights are on for the longest period of time and you have to work with the worst case scenario and not the best case or average scenario.

I always suggest if you have dry cell lights, that you try them with rechargeable Nicad or NiMh and run them on dry cells to check their run time and then run them on NiMh and check they run on them and the time again and if they work correctly then put a sticker or mark on them indicating you can run them on rechargeables.


Other forms of lighting exist and if we are true to our philosophy of having two or more ways to do or achieve something we have to consider other forms of lighting and generally they are defined as “fuel lamps” and can be gas or petrol powered for the best illumination; or hurricane type lamps running off paraffin, or simply home made oil lamps and even candles.
Fuel lamps provide the best lighting, but at a price, a standard gas light runs on a gas cylinder costing £10 for a pack of four and runs for around 6 hours per cylinder or 24 hours for £10 with 80 watts of light output; meanwhile I have a petrol lantern with a 0.9 litre fuel reservoir which runs for 16 hours per 0.9 litre fill and produces 220 watts of light and can be turned down to 110 watts of light. 1 gallon of petrol is 4.54 litres and petrol is £1.40 per litre at the time of writing and would give 5 fills for a cost of £6.30 for 80 hours of light at full power or 160 hours at 110 watts of light. The maths and costs speak for themselves and as I have a petrol lantern I know both the gas and petrol lanterns produce light and heat which may be useful heat in cold weather and save on some of your logs for the log burner. You have to have spare mantles for these types of lights.

Most issues come with charging batteries in the middle of winter and often this is you cannot charge them quicker than you use them as a basic solar set up is working at its worst and not charging the batteries and this means a fuel light gives you a break from battery lighting which gives them the chance to charge up. Now comes the conflict, of you have spare gas cylinders, are they the ones you use in your gas cooker? And if you have a petrol lantern is this the same petrol you would use in your generator as these are the contradictions you have to account for.

If you have the hurricane type lamps they give out less light and heat and while they may be extremely useful their fuel does not conflict with anything else and does not take off your cooking or generator fuel and is a stand alone fuel, so yes they are potentially worthwhile having along with paraffin. Bought or home made oil lamps are similar in they give out less light and heat and they do not conflict as lamp oil is not used anywhere else. They can never be overlooked as sometimes if you have no light, any type of light will suffice and we also have to remember light is also security in these types of times where there are many unprepared people.

Candles are the final lighting solution and were used for centuries as lighting in all applications and conditions as a candle would be used in a castle or basic shelter and even in the front lights of horse drawn carriages; and latterly the Victorian light machines for their early slide shows, so yes candles do have uses to this day. If you have, or intend using candles do you go for the basic candle or do you go for something more complex such as a modern tea light? Both have positives and negatives and this is basically safety and how you achieve it as modern homes have many more flammable materials.

If you run the standard candles then I suggest getting some second hand candlesticks which are available in many junk shops as the candles are a tight fit in them and their metal base is heavy and wide enough to make them stable and steady; tea lights are the opposite as they are short and fat which makes them stable, or you can get the wide church type candles. One word of warning is to ensure there is nothing flammable around your candles so putting them on a shelf of your wooden unit is not recommended and anything you do put them on must be sturdy.

Other variables

These may include other rooms you want to light and the obvious may be a cellar as this is where you store your food and water and you need reasonable lighting as it may have no windows or other forms of lighting and you need to see to get food, water, and other essential supplies and I would suggest a battery lantern as they have no emissions to taint food or water.

You may not have a cellar and instead you have a sturdy loft which you use and again the same principles apply as you may need a lantern which is battery powered and ideally with Nicad or NiMh rechargeables as your lantern may only be on for 15 minutes per day while you fill a smaller water container and collect the days food.

You may have a secure shed or outbuilding instead and again this is best served with a lantern so you have adequate light to collect your food and water.

Now for a family of four we are up to 3 or 4 lanterns, four small torches and other fuelled lanterns such as gas or petrol and potentially a couple of hurricane lamps along with either a wind up torch or lantern, or both, and a head torch.