Switching to LED lights

[Airnet]

Hello,
Are there any experts that can confirm my thinking on LED lights conversion. We purchased a 1999 Westbay in August. The prior owner was in the process of replacing the interior halogen lights with LEDs. On the first showing, we notice the LED's were flickering like they were connected to a non LED dimmer. The broker and owner didn't notice the pulsing but it bothered the wife and I. Fast forward 3 months, I finally had time last week to look into the flickering. I found the old halogen lights are on a 12 volt AC circuit. The new LED's are installed on this same 12 volt AC circuit but need 12 volt DC. The prior owner purchased enough replacement LED's to do the entire boat and we like them.

The question: There are 4 light circuits. Since I'm redoing the entire boat with LED's, can't I just move the wire from the AC panel to the DC panel after I finish a circuit? I understand I would also need to remove the 110 AC to 12 volt AC converter.

Thanks,
Curt

 

[Comodave]

Welcome aboard. It would be a real PITA to run new wire. So if you use the old wire I would mark the wires accordingly. On A/C the hot is black. On DC it is red. And the black is ground. I would use the proper color electrical tape and inside each light wrap the wires to show the correct color. That is why electrical panels that have both A/C and DC circuits in them have to have the A/C side covered. Because of the black wires being hot. Also at the panel end mark the wires properly.

 

[Airnet]

That's a great idea to mark the wire the proper color for future clarification.
Thanks

 

[Insequent]

For colour coding wires I use coloured heat shrink, although I usually don't actually heat it to fit it tightly. That way it is easy to cover a good length of the wire fast. My boats AC was mostly converted to Euro (230V 50 Hz) and its colour coding.

As to moving the 4 12V AC wires to the DC panel I don't see any problem doing that once you are sure there is nothing else on the circuit apart from lights.

 

[O C Diver]

One of the things often overlooked in converting from halogen to LED is the reduction in power consumption. LED lights have a small electronic chip on the board. It is extremely rare, but occasionally they cook off and can start a fire depending on the light housing. Whenever possible, it's best to reduce the fuse amperage to no more than is needed to power all lights on the circuit. When the chip cooks off, it increases the amperage draw and hopefully the fuses blows before a fire starts.

As an example, my engine room had 4 incandescent lights. I doubled the number of fixtures and converted them all to LED. After measuring the total load with an amp meter, I was able to swap the 40 amp breaker for a 5 amp breaker. You can generate a lot of heat with a 40 amp 12 volt circuit!

If you don't want to swap breakers, you can install an ATC fuse holder between the breaker and the wire going to the light circuit. Fuses as low as 1 amp are available for ATC fuse holders.

Ted

 

[pjtemplin]

Just to be sure, you did mean to type 12VAC right? Not 120VAC?

 

[luna]

Airnet.

Does your boat have one or 2, 120V AC Breakers labeled "Lighting Transformers" or something that means the same thing?

 

[Airnet]

There are four 120v AC lighting (salon, master, guest, wheel house) breakers. They go to separate 120v AC - 12v AC transformers. I want to remove the 12v AC transformer and move that circuit over to separate 12v DC breakers. This is to fix the already installed LED lights that flicker at 60 times per second (think strobe light). Those LED light fixtures don't have an AC-DC transformer on them, just wire, LED, and trim. I would also need to finish swapping out the 12v AC halogen lights on those circuits since there are still a mix of LED and halogen.
I wish I had pictures but I'm traveling right now.
There are already two 12v dc lighting breakers on the DC panel for other parts of the boat.

 

[Comodave]

You will love LED over the Halogen. Much less power consumption and waaay less heat.

 

[Airnet]

I can't wait. I've already burned myself twice. The best part is all the LEDs are already there just waiting to be installed. It's a free upgrade.

 

[Comodave]

Yes. Our current boat had halogen lights. The PO had started to replace them with LED but the ones he used were warm white and my wife likes a colder white so out with those and in with colder white ones. I counted how many I needed, 18. So I ordered 20 to have some spares for future use if necessary. I ran out so I ordered 4 more and ran out again…. But now the lighting is great and the wife is happy.

 

[luna]

Ok, the four interior lighting circuits driving the Halogen or Xenon bulbs were powered by 120V AC that was stepped down by the transformers to 12V AC. You turn the lighting breaker on, that powers the transformer, 12V AC is now at the light switch, you turn the switch on and you have light.
This would mean that while underway in order to turn on a light you would have to run the genset or turn on an inverter that may not have existed on board at time of build.

Run the genset just for an interior light, to me that seems odd.

Is there no way currently to power these 12V lights with 12V DC battery power?

 

[Airnet]

Yes that is correct. The inverter has to be on to have lights.
Although the inverter would be on anyway for the fridge. Very inefficient to go from DC battery power to AC back to DC for a LED. That is why I'd like to move over to the DC panel.

I just wanted to make sure I wasn't missing something obvious. The halogens pull 10 watts. The LEDs pull 3 watts. Seems like the wire size should be fine but I'm not an expert.

 

[Iggy]

I am little surprised that they are flicking. I think you have a modified sine wave inverter, not a pure sine wave one. I only mention this in case you have any sensitive electronics.

The tungsten light bulbs in our homes turn off and on too. We just don't notice it since its going it 120 per second.

 

[Marco Flamingo]

I've had some odd lighting with LED lights that I installed in my engine room. I put in a couple strings of lights often used to pimp cars for kids (by placing strings of lights underneath the vehicle.) Because LEDs are for a certain voltage range, I think that these car LEDs are for a 12V car system while running (i.e., for 12.5-14.5 volts). For my engine room, it is really bright when the engine is running. Unfortunately, that's not when I'm doing work in the ER. At anchor, any slight voltage drop means that some of the individual LEDs dim, flicker, or drop out. A noticeable difference in the amount of light. I haven't checked with a multimeter, but I doubt that checking the connections is the problem.

 

[luna]

Boat builders sometimes do things for a not so obvious reason.

Perhaps there was not enough room in the DC panel to power all the circuits so instead of getting a larger panel, they simply took some not so critical circuits (interior lighting) and powered them with AC. This works as incandescent lamps don't care about wave form, they will work with AC or DC, although I would look for a Bridge Rectifier in each circuit and if found, remove it when you remove the lighting transformers.

On my boat (a 1996) there was no OEM inverter, so all the mounted lighting, except 3 are powered by 12V DC. In addition to this DC power source there was also a pair of Lighting Transformers that took 120V AC and like yours made it 12V. By way of a couple of soup can sized contactors and Bridge Rectifiers, when you turned on the Lighting Transformers the 12V DC was shut off and the 12V AC (rectified into DC but with lots of ripple) was applied to the same conductors that originally feed DC to the 12V lights.

The goal for all of this transforming, rectifying and switching was that when you pulled into a dock with depleted house batteries and you plugged in, the lighting load was on the grid, not the battery charger. As a result your battery charger had an easier time recharging the batteries and could be smaller. Lighting load could easily be 20-40 amps.

Underway, no inverter was required only an alternator.

LED lighting with their low current requirements made all of this equipment superfluous and it has been remove, long ago.

 

[Patrick4002]

i use led bats in the galley, i have the other g4 halogeen changed to leds, but most of them break very fast, the do not get warm, i have changed them beck to 10w halageen, no problems anny more, they use more power but the cost is 1/10 of leds and they last mutch longer in the original g4 fixings. the led bars working fine

 

[Iggy]

I little off topic. When I bought my 2001 boat 2 of the lights by the engine were not working. The heat after 20yrs got to them.

I found there lights https://www.superbrightleds.com/veh...me-light-w-door-switch-470-lumens-4000k-3000k For short money, lifetime warrantee, 1.5 inch's tall, about 600 lumens and IP67. They look cheap, outer plastic case but there in the engine compartment and work great for $12 bucks each.

 

[Steve DAntonio]

There are four 120v AC lighting (salon, master, guest, wheel house) breakers. They go to separate 120v AC - 12v AC transformers. I want to remove the 12v AC transformer and move that circuit over to separate 12v DC breakers. This is to fix the already installed LED lights that flicker at 60 times per second (think strobe light). Those LED light fixtures don't have an AC-DC transformer on them, just wire, LED, and trim. I would also need to finish swapping out the 12v AC halogen lights on those circuits since there are still a mix of LED and halogen.
I wish I had pictures but I'm traveling right now.
There are already two 12v dc lighting breakers on the DC panel for other parts of the boat.

It was common to run halogen lights off of low voltage AC using step down transformers. I often encounter banks of these small transformers on vessels built in the 90s and early 2000s when halogens were popular. If the lights were DC, they would often exceed the battery charger's ability to keep up with the load.

 

[HeadedToTexas]

I found there lights https://www.superbrightleds.com/veh...me-light-w-door-switch-470-lumens-4000k-3000k For short money, lifetime warrantee, 1.5 inch's tall, about 600 lumens and IP67. They look cheap, outer plastic case but there in the engine compartment and work great for $12 bucks each.

Those look good, Iggy, but I see they are not FCC listed. Have you seen any issues with VHF or AIS interference?

 

[Comodave]

It was common to run halogen lights off of low voltage AC using step down transformers. I often encounter banks of these small transformers on vessels built in the 90s and early 2000s when halogens were popular. If the lights were DC, they would often exceed the battery charger's ability to keep up with the load.

Our boat had a ton of the 12 volt halogen puck lights. The first project I had was to replace them with LED. There was over 20 of them at 10 watts each, and the heat…

 

[stevemitchell]

Kaos had 40 plus halogen lights throughout the boat. With all of them on, they drew over 60 amps total. I swapped them in the first few weeks to LED, and some of them to dual color LED for night use, and reduced that to under 5 amps.

As several other folks have mentioned, proper fusing when switching to lower amperage lights is important.

 

[Iggy]

Those look good, Iggy, but I see they are not FCC listed. Have you seen any issues with VHF or AIS interference?

No, but they are in the engine compartment. If they were at the helm or galley than I would be more concerned.

On the other hand, the lights are not on while underway. If they are, I have bigger problems.

 

[Ron Stevenson]

Your refer should be 12V if it is actually marine. Some do run a 120V transformer that converts it to 12V.