BA:
I'm no EE, but  I did sleep at a....
Watts is Volts x Amps. (at a power factor of 1.0, anyhow!)
So,  if a 120 watt string of lights takes 1 Amp at 120 Volts, and if you
are lucky enough to find a similar string of lights made for 12 Volts,
it would need 10 Amps to put out the same amount of light. At 10 Amps,
those hair thin wires would be lighting up almost as much as the bulb
filaments. They would need about #16 AWG wire to carry 10 amps.
This is what the classical struggle between Edison and Tesla was all
about. (when was that 1880's?)
And it's called TRANSMISSION. And it IS somewhat related to that thing
under your car. (in principle.) That's why those cross country power
lines have 18 insulators holding each wire - they are 175,000 volts.
Well, you CAN run stuff off your battery, but precious little
without..... MONSTER CABLES!  18 year old boys know this! At least those
that dream of 1000watt subwoofers.
Don't they teach this stuff in school anymore?  Like in 8th grade
science class?
Al Brase

BA wrote:

>On Sun, 03 Apr 2005 20:00:28 -0400, you wrote:
>
>
>
>>I'm looking to get a string of party lights to hand from my awning.
>>I've seen some that have a DC plug on them but it really cuts down on
>>the selection. Is it possible to just cut off the AC plug and splice on
>>a cig lighter DC style plug?
>>
>>thanks
>>
>>JFF
>>
>>
>
>
>Nope.  There are power issues ... I don't entirely understand it but
>that's because I got my EE degree (barely) many years ago, and I've
>forgotten most of it (what I do for a living is software rather than
>EE hardware).
>
>You can buy 12V strings of party lights,  They're not cheap - not even
>at WalMart.  And as you've noticed, the selection is limited.
>
>If you google, you can find people who have converted AC strings of
>lights to 12V DC.  There's something about turning a serial string of
>120 V AC into parallel strings of 4 lamps each for 12V DC.  That
>"sounds" right to my vague EE memory ...
>
>My hero S saved me from having to re-learn enough to do it by
>installing an inverter so I could run standard strings of party lights
>from our aux battery.  But as it happens, I just run the party lights
>when we have an electrical hookup.
>
>
>B(&S)
>'87 Westy 'Esmerelda Blanc'
>SoCal
>
>
>