Portable battery pack for 240v 3-pin plug?

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dafman

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#265484 23-Jan-2020 18:29

I've got some outdoor lights that plug into a standard 240v 3-pin house plug.

The thing is, I want to string them up in an area that doesn't have access to power.

Is there such a thing as a portable battery that you can plug a 3 pin plug into?

Or any other suggestions on how to get up and running would be appreciated, or am I stuffed?

Scott3

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#2405466 23-Jan-2020 18:45

They are available, be if it is feasible depends on the draw of the lights, required run-time, and your budget.

This one has 300W continuous, 1200W peak (pure sine) AC output, and 428Wh of capacity

https://www.rubbermonkey.co.nz/Goal-Zero-Yeti-400-Lithium-Portable-Power-Station-230v

Might be cheaper to swap the lights out for something that is designed to run on DC power or solar, as the pure sine inverter is what makes the price so high.

robjg63

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#2405473 23-Jan-2020 19:13

As above that will be horribly expensive.

Replacing the lighting string with someone else (Solar for example) would be hugely cheaper.

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Technofreak

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#2405525 23-Jan-2020 21:03

If you really really want to use those lights a portable generator would be a far better option. I'm assuming they're incandescent bulbs probably at least 40 watts each. How many? Assuming 10 bulbs that's a minimum of 400 watts probably more. You'll need a fair size battery to power the inverter to run them.

A portable generator could cost about the same as the batterypack/inverter linked above. See here for what I'm talking about https://www.enertecmarinesystems.com/product/juice-lh2500i/

Incandescent bulbs don't need a pure sine wave in fact they'll run just as well on DC. Any old waveform will do which would reduce the price of an inverter.

Is it a one off occasion? if so hiring a portable generator may be the most cost effective option.

If it's more of a permanent arrangement you might be better off spending the money you'd spend on a generator or a decent sized battery pack/inverter on buying a set of low volt led lights and powering them off some rechargeable batteries

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richms

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#2405532 23-Jan-2020 21:31

If you are looking at festoon style lights, bunnings have quite a few sets of outdoor ones that are all 30 or 36v (cant recall) but in anycase its a voltage in the range of a cheap DC to DC converter.

I have used a DC boost converter to take 5v from a powerbank up to the 30v that a cheap set of outdoor lights needed. But they were designed that the power supply output AC with half the lamps on each polarity so that it could vary the duty cycle between the 2 sets of lights to make a crude fade effect, so I could only ever have half the lamps working. This was for an outside table and the final input to the thing was about 18 watts which needed a grunty powerbank to run.

Richard rich.ms

dafman

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#2406469 25-Jan-2020 09:57

As suspected it's too expensive and overkill, so will look for solar or other options. Appreciate the comments.

neb

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#2407281 27-Jan-2020 00:45

robjg63:
As above that will be horribly expensive.

Replacing the lighting string with someone else (Solar for example) would be hugely cheaper.

+1 to that. Any portable (meaning non-mains-powered) lighting setup is going to be vastly less expensive than an inverter + battery bank or generator.