What it draws
LED Lighting
Lighting is the load people plan for first and the one that least needs a battery. A handful of LED lamps is a small enough draw that a mid-size power station carries them for a day, which is worth knowing mostly so you can stop worrying about it and spend the attention elsewhere.
Typical draw, and the number that actually applies
Roughly 6 to 12 W per LED bulb, so three or four lamps together sit in the range of 20 to 45 W. The figure printed on the bulb or the lamp base is the one that applies to yours.
Read the nameplate. It is usually a sticker on the back, inside a door, or on the power adapter, and the figure printed there is a maximum for that specific unit rather than a typical reading. Any range on this page is a starting point for arithmetic, not a substitute for that label.
- Running watts used here
- 30 W
- Duty share applied
- Continuous
- Average draw for the estimate
- 30 W
Hours from a 1024 Wh battery
The row stops at 24 blocks; the estimate runs past it. Estimated hours from the reference battery at 30 W average draw. An estimate, not a guarantee.
The arithmetic, in full
hours = (rated Wh x 0.85) / average watts
average watts = 30 W running x 1, continuous = 30 W
= (1024 x 0.85) / 30 W = 870 Wh / 30 W
The estimate below assumes three or four LED lamps running continuously through an AC outlet on the battery. Running the same lamps from their own internal cells, or using flashlights instead, costs the battery nothing at all.
The derate of 0.85 covers inverter conversion loss and the share of rated capacity a pack will not hand back. It is one planning figure applied to every unit on this site, not a measurement of any particular model.
Starting surge
This load has no meaningful starting surge. It draws essentially the same at switch-on as it does a minute later, which makes it one of the easy ones: if the continuous output is large enough, the load will run.
Duty cycle
This load draws continuously while it is switched on, so no duty share is applied and the average draw is the running draw. Switching it off is the only thing that reduces it.
How to get by without powering it
Every watt-hour you do not spend is one you still have. These are the moves that cost nothing.
- Use flashlights and battery lanterns. This is the entire reason light sits in the first stage of the sequence and not the third.
- Put one light in each bedroom and one at the top of the stairs before the outage, so nobody is walking through a dark house looking for one.
- Save phone screens for phone tasks. Using a phone as a lamp is the fastest way to lose the phone.
Where this sits in the sequence
This load becomes realistic at stage 1, and not before. Read that stage including the part about what it does not cover, because the limits are the useful half.
Related gear
Products live on the gear pages rather than here, because the decision on this page is about arithmetic and the decision there is about hardware.