We’ve been losing electric power at our house more frequently than before and the biggest issue has been the need to use flashlights at night.
Any recommendations for emergency lights that I can leave plugged into various AC outlets around the house that come on when it is dark and they sense loss of power? They don’t have to be bright (we can use flashlights if necessary) but need to last through the night.
Being able to recharge through a car’s 12V lighter port would be a plus but not necessary since only our sub division has this erratic supply problem and I can go over to a friend’s house during the day to bring them back to full charge.
P.S.: Longer term, I need to look into a transfer switch and generator solution
I think there are many different types of light bulbs or plug-in lights that will automatically come on when they sense a power outage. Doubt they would last through the night though. These bulbs and these lights are just a few of the options available on Amz.
I’ve seen these lightblubs that have an internal battery(!) which turns it on when power’s off. Been a bunch on vipon a ways back, might still be some.
What about regular emergency lights like you see in building hallways? A bit bulky, but they’d do the job.
I “made” a fluorescent light from a coupla extra LED replacement tubes. No fixture, the tubes work single-ended, so an extra tombstone, pigtail, and some assorted wood pieces, and I now have a plug-in standalone light. Ugly as sin, but it works.
These are decent for the money. At work we put 2 of these in for a nursing facility in a disused storage rooms.
No affiliation with manufacturer or retailer, no idea on longevity.
We’re in Northern California and our area has been having one every few weeks this past summer because of blown transformers or rotating load shedding on the part of the utility or them turning power out on hot days because the power lines are near dry vegetation and might cause a fire.
I’m hoping that things get better now that it has begun to cool down.
I’ve been using the term in the sense of a light that turns on automatically when the power goes off at night and provides a dim light. We do have a couple from several years ago but that only last a couple of hours.
We do keep flashlights in every nightstand drawer but it is more convenient to have some sort of dim ambient lighting.
One thought from this website is is to get flashlights with a very low brightness setting (firefly? moonlight?) and a diffuser dome and leave them on during blackouts.
I’ve got a few of these. I think in the short term they could be useful. The weak link seems to be the battery. Most seem to have low quality, small size, NiMh. They are continuously charged for extended periods of time, with only brief use. The end result is a light with a pretty short effective use time because of a trashed battery.
Best use is they come on with the blackout, allowing you to go around and set up your lights that have better uses, and hopefully better batteries.
I have a few solar lights with Li batteries. I’ve been surprised how well they have held up, especially given the batteries have all be mid-grade at best. They get cycled continuously, until daylight is too short to sustain them, then stored.
I imagine a properly set up one on charge might work, but not sure of the long term safety of that.
