Rewiring a factory-made light string from 120V to 12V might be a big
challenge. There's also the current draw to consider: you didn't say if
you were wanting to run incandescent bulbs or LEDs. A string of 25 C7
(the big outdoor seven-watt) bulbs would be (25 Bulbs X 7 Watts = 175
watts, which is about 15 amps at 12 volts (not counting inverter losses)
so running that string for, say, eight hours would need 120 amp-hours. A
darn big aux battery.

Far more energy-efficient would be those strings that use LED bulbs.
I've seen strings of 70 LED Christmas lights that use only 3.5 watts. A
third of an amp-hour per hour. My inverter doesn't draw much excess
current and thinking about it, it would be fun to bring a string of
those things along in Mellow Yellow to festivize the site.

A nice warm white might be hard to come by, the LED strings I've seen
use the cheaper colder bluish-white LEDs.

Richard Koerner wrote:
> Went camping recently, had shore A/C power at the campground, and ran
> a string of white Christmas lights outside the vanagon laid on the
> ground....just for the fun of it.... but provides just the right
> amount of light for illuminating the area.  Girlfriend likes it, too;
> now, she wants them all the time, even when out in the middle of
> nowhere.
>
> I have an aux battery per the GoWesty kit.  So one option is to run
> the Christmas lights off a 120 VAC inverter.....easy smeasy I guess
> to do that.  The other option is to "rewire" the string of lights so
> as to directly operate off 12 VDC; my string has 50 bulbs so normally
> 120V divided by 50 is 2.4 volts per lightbulb....thus need to "group"
> about 6 or 7 bulbs in series across the 12 volts of the auxillary
> battery.  Yes, much more hassle than simply using the inverter, but
> probably more electrically efficient, and I could "derate" the bulbs
> by putting them in groups of 8 or 9 thus with slightly dimmer light.
>
> Anyway, I suppose a third option is to buy 12VDC Christmas lights
> from someplace....they must be available.  But that takes all the
> challenge out of it!
>
> Just wondering if the List has any clever ideas on this; basically it
> provides low-cost, pleasant, lighting around the campsite in the
> immediate vicinity of the slider door area.  So would candles and a
> kerosene lantern I guess.....but candles blow out, and don't want to
> carry 2 or 3 kerosene lanterns, too bulky.
>
> Rich 85 Vanagon San Diego

--
Mike "Rocket J Squirrel" Elliott
84 Westfalia: Mellow Yellow ("The Electrical Banana")
74 Westrailia: (Ladybug Trailer company, San Juan Capistrano, Calif.)
Bend, OR
KG6RCR