The LED beacon lights have become a hot topic among boaters, and with good reason. Although they got off to a rocky start, LEDs now offer performance and efficiency old-style incandescent lamps simply can’t match. LEDs last longer, use far less energy, can handle tough operating conditions, and are so versatile there are few onboard applications they can’t be adapted to. They also offer the ability to produce some impressive customizations that formerly were either just too expensive to justify, or consumed too much power to make practical. Underwater hull lighting and coloured topside illumination effects are the main customizations that come to mind and both have become extremely popular over the last five years in large part due to the availability of effective and practical lights fixture options.
To make the matter of power generation and consumption furthermore acute, when cruising at night, or even at anchor, boaters must display the proper navigation or anchor lights in order to meet compliance with waterway regulations and maintain a safely visible profile. And of course, these lights are also significant sources of electrical power consumption and cannot be rationed or limited in their use.
What type of lighting is used in the engine room?
It is for this reason that lighting used in the engine room should carry explosion-proof certification. Explosion-proof certified lighting is specifically designed to protect against this sort of accidental ignition of flammable or explosive gases and vapours and could make all the difference between a simple repair and a catastrophic accident.
By combining LEDs with explosion-proof certification, you address both of the most common engine room lighting issues. You provide powerful illumination that won’t drain batteries and prevent the possibility of accidentally igniting any flammable vapours that may be present. It’s important to keep in mind that any controls such as switches or dimmers should be mounted outside the engine room access door, thus providing even greater protection.
The next time you consider making an addition or change to your boats’ lighting system, consider utilizing explosion proof fixtures in the engine room. They may cost a little more and require a little more work to understand, but the benefits far outweigh any gains you might get from using cheap uncertified equipment.
The maintenance of these lights:
Perhaps the most effortless approaches to improve installed lighting productivity and recover a great part of the usefulness and down to earth utilization of your locally available lighting is to overhaul the entirety of your installations to units using LEDs instead of glowing bulbs. Since LEDs utilize something like 80% less electrical force yet produce so much or more than the glowing bulbs they supplant, it is conceivable to the force utilized by locally available lighting by up to 75%.
For example, an ordinary 50-watt halogen spreader will draw 50 watts at 4.5 amps and produce 800 lumens of light yield. You could supplant this spreader with a LED adaptation creating 850 lumens yet drawing just 10 watts at under 1amp, along these lines delivering all the more light, yet utilizing just a portion as much electrical force.
Benefits of these lights:
The benefits don’t stop with improved efficiency, however. LED fixtures tend to produce a whiter, sharper light output, improving the visibility and range of the fixture compared to their incandescent counterparts. LEDs last far longer as well, with a typical incandescent lasting around 1,000 hours, while an LED can last anywhere from 30,000 to 100,000 hours depending on the design. This means no more light bulb changes for several years, and no more climbing up a mast every season to replace an all-around or anchor light.
A similar sort of progress can be normal with pretty much any move up to the structure and production. On the off chance that we expected an unpleasant absolute lighting power necessity of state 45 amps, changing to all LED beacon lights could decrease the all-out burden to 11.5 amps.