Author Topic: Rechargeable battery selection for powering LEDs at an off the grid festival?  (Read 936 times)

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Offline Metatronic_ModsTopic starter

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Hi all, so a couple years ago I bought one of the Tentsile "tree tents" for festival camping. To really complete the UFO parked in the trees look I added some addressable LED strips running a custom program. Thus far, I've been using a 20Ah deep cycle non-spillable lead acid battery, which works fine but I've probably drastically reduced it's life with the sparse chargings and lack of attention to discharge amounts.

Seeing as it's nearly time for a replacement, I'm wondering if a deep cycle battery is still the way to go, or if there's some charge controlled lithium battery that would be better suited to the task? The downsides of the deep cycle are size/weight, and no way to prevent over-discharging (though I suppose I could eventually add that in to my control box).

At any rate, the requirements are 12V for the LEDs. They draw on average 0.75A, and I typically run them for ~20 hours over the course of a weekend. So I'd ideally want >=15Ah, but I could always cut down the brightness or run time.
 

Offline floobydust

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I find lead-acid batteries are pretty tough and low cost.

The only thing a lithium battery could offer is smaller size and higher cost. They need more care against over-discharge and proper charging.
Either way you should probably incorporate a low-voltage cutoff.

There are LiFePO4 using 24 of 3,300mAh cells to get 12V 20Ah. But $270 with balancing PCM. 5 times longer life & lighter weight. Just expensive.
 


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