One of the most popular and useful upgrades you can make, especially on and older boat is changing the halogen and incandescent bulbs for modern LEDs. Lets look at the benefits, considerations and common mistakes.
Why change to LED?
Well, that´s actually quite easy, halogen bulbs are very energy inefficient. They lose a tremendous amount of their light energy to heat, just ask anyone who has touched a halogen bulb after it just blew, put your hand near one and you will easily feel the heat they produce. LED bulbs in comparison produce little to no heat and they consume a fraction of the amount of electrical energy, this is especially important if you have lights running from battery power.
This video illustrates perfectly the power consumption and brightness of the LED vs incandescent bulbs
Hot and cold
With LED bulbs you can choose if you want ultra white bright lighting or the warmer more halogen like yellow glow. The gauge used is called the Kelvin scale, the higher the number the whiter the light is, typically the highest number you will come across for very white bulbs is 6000k that will be compatible with DC systems. I would say about 4000K is daylight and 3000K is more yellow.
White bulbs are especially good for task lighting, such as reading lamps, galley, head and bathroom. Low level deck or courtesy lamps are also typically now whiter lights. The 3000K yellow lamps offer a softer more cozy lighting, typically of ambience lighting such as table lamps or principal salon and corridor lighting to keep the mood tranquil.
Its a bit dim
There is a slight issue with the LED bulbs, the most common LED replacement bulb for a boat is called a G4 fitting, it has two wires that slot into the bulb holder either horizontally or vertically, a G4 is one of the smallest bulbs, finding ones that are compatible with dimmers can be a battle for when you want ones that run from battery (DC) power, they are available, just expect more time searching for them.
Although the Kelvin scale used to indicate the colour or whiteness of the light, the bulbs lighting output is measured in Lumens, the higher the number the more light output will come from the bulb. I once got a bit too ambitious, installed a high lumen output LED lamp (not just bulb) for an engine room as the boat captain was fed up of not seeing enough in there, let´s just say there are football stadiums that are worse lit up, solution was to move the light to a new location.
Measure 3 times, buy once
From quite a bit of experience on this, never assume the same bulbs from the last job are going to fit the next jobs light fittings, even though they are both G4 bulbs. The better bulbs on the market have very precise drawings on their webpages to enable you to get ones that fit. Make sure your replacement bulbs will fit your existing lamps, this is especially true of flush fit lamps. It is not uncommon to find the two wires that are fitted to the replacement LED bulbs to be overly long, they can be cut done a bit if necessary.
I can assure you that cheap off brand bulbs will not last long on a boat, they have an alarming failure rate.
What's a Watt?
A Watt is the unit of electrical power equal to one ampere under the pressure of one volt
We now have a new problem, bare with me a while as this needs a little explanation. We have changed our old energy consuming bulbs to new ones that consume a fraction of the electrical energy of the old ones, so much more efficient and usually a considerably longer lifespan, enter a warm and fuzzy feeling, that´s not quite the end of it though, you see we now have all those low energy consumption bulbs being protected by the old fuse or breaker that was there to protect the older much higher consumption bulbs.
This is something so very often overlooked when doing this upgrade. Avoid mixing and matching different types of bulbs on the same circuit, so not putting LED bulbs on the same run as normal bulbs. Most people when they ask for the bulbs to be changed, all of them are changed on the same circuit. So if you have your salon lights on one circuit, you change all the salon lights or bulbs for LEDs.
A bit of school science
The amps, volts, watts relationship. These three are linked and are going to help us work out what size fuse or breaker we need to protect our new bulbs. There should be no need to change any wiring as if done properly it will be of a size adequate for the halogen bulbs. That said, as always on a boat, anything that looks suspicious should be dealt with sooner rather than later, especially wiring and electrical.
Volts, is fixed and we know the value, 12 or 24 on boats. Effectively the amount of electricity we need to make things work.
Amps, this is what your breakers or fuses will be rated in, amps are the amount of electricity that is running through the electrical cables. A bit like water running through a hose.
Watts, could be thought of the amount of work the electricity is doing or needs to do to perform a function, in this case lighting some bulbs.
A series of parallels
Do you remember those old Christmas lights, if one of the bulbs the bulbs failed none of the lights would work, cue much untangling of cables and checking bulbs. That´s because they are connected in series, if one bulb in the series fails, they all do.
Lighting is typically installed in parallel, so if one bulb should fail the others carry on working.
A practical example
Using an example of five original 20 watt halogen bulbs, installed on a 12V system. The total wattage is 100 watts (5x20W). To calculate the amount of amps, we divide the total number of watts of the light bulbs by the volts, so 100/12=8,3 amps, the original fuse protecting this circuit was rated at 10 amps, the correct size.
Our new bulbs are 3 watts, so in our new example, the 5 bulbs are only 15 watts total. To calculate for the new fuse, we have 15/12=1,25 amps. As you can see the original 10 amp fuse would be way too high to protect these bulbs, it was substituted for a 2 amp fuse.
Update
A few months ago, discussing this very issue on a forum, someone who claimed to be a qualified electrician disagreed with me on downsizing the fuse to match the bulbs, this was based upon that a fuse is there to protect the smallest wire in the circuit, I agreed with them.
In this example we are upgrading or changing to bulbs or sometimes light fittings and using the existing cables that were intended for incandescent bulbs, the fuse or circuit protection that is protecting these cables is way oversized. Seeing as our power draw is a fraction of what it was before, I feel it prudent to not let the weakest part in the circuit be the new LED bulbs, especially if sourced from an unknown supplier.
Navigation lights
This is an important point. Navigation lights on boats are made to very specific standards, they are designed to be seen from a minimum distance and are built to recognized international standards. I cannot say truthfully that I have seen a replacement bulb that can confirm it will meet those standards. I can say that there are many replacement LED navigation lights that DO meet the required standards. If I were upgrading my navigation lights I personally would personally just replace the whole light unit. There are many lights that are direct replacements for originals just with LEDs instead of normal bulbs, so no need to drill new holes or make many modifications. Navigation lights are crucial on a boat and they lead a hard life so making sure you are meeting the regulations and for your own safety it is a very worthwhile investment.
Summary
Upgrading of halogens to LED´s is a huge improvement, both in options of bulbs available and lower energy consumption, as well as a very noticeable reduction in heat, especially on larger boats where the number of bulbs is much greater, but I cannot stress enough about correctly protecting the circuit for the lights with a new fuse or breaker with a reduced amperage to match the new bulbs.
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