How To Power LED Strip Lights with Battery?

LED strip lighting is a flexible and changeable lighting product. It cannot be directly plugged into 220V for a power supply, it needs the power to transform and light up. How to light the led strip without a power supply? At some point, you may want to use the battery to power your LED strip lights for convenience. Batteries are handy if you’re somewhere without power, like camping or in your car.

In this article, we’ll show you how to power the led strip lights with a battery. How to choose the right battery? and connect them to your LED strip so you can use your LED strip anywhere!

Can You Power Your LED Strip Lights with a Battery?

Yes, you can power the LED strip lights with batteries. But you should use rechargeable batteries as they last longer and save energy.

Why Do I Power The Led Strip Lights with Battery?

Because it is not easy to wire in some places, and it is not easy to use AC220V power supply, such as basements, cabinets, and closets under sinks, drawers, under cabinets, garages, campsites, and inside cars. These places do not have easy access to power.

Batteries are portable and we can take them with us everywhere. As a result of external exposure, and no power supply, the battery is the most useful.

How To Choose a Battery For LED Strip Lights?

When you want to use the batteries to power your led strip lights. Please refer to the following three points.

LED Strip Lights Voltage Must Match Battery Output Voltage

The battery cannot provide a voltage level higher than the voltage specification of the LED strip lights, which will cause damage to the LED light strip. Conversely, if the voltage is not enough, it will result in reduced brightness or no light at all.

If you want to use standard AA batteries, you can use a battery holder that generates 12V from eight 1.5V AA batteries.

Battery Supply Capacity Should Be Sufficient For Your Needs

Battery capacity is typically calculated in milliamp hours, abbreviated mAh, or watt-hours, abbreviated Wh. This value indicates the hours the battery can provide a certain electrical current (mA) or power (W) before it runs out of charge.

First, determine the power draw of the LED strip in watts. This is usually provided in a specification sheet for the LED strip product. It is usually expressed in watts per foot or meter. If it is provided in A (Amps), multiply the number by 1000 to convert to milliamps (mA). If is provided in watts (W), divide the number by the voltage (e.g. 12V) and multiply the result by 1000.

Then, find the mAh rating from the battery. mAh ratings for common battery types are below:

AA Dry Cell: 400-900 mAh

AA Alkaline: 1700-2850 mAh

9V Alkaline: 550 mAh

Standard car battery: 45,000 mAh

Finally, divide the battery mAh value by the LED strip mA value. The result is the expected battery life in hours.

LED Strip Lights and Battery Pack Must Match

The most important thing is to make sure the wires and connectors are compatible. Most battery packs will provide either bare wires or DC connectors as their output terminals, the same as most wall plug power units.

What kind of Batteries Be Used for LED Strip Lights?

There are a variety of batteries on the market that can power LED strips, each serving a different purpose. Common batteries are button cells, alkaline cells, and lithium cells.

Button Cell Battery

A button cell battery is a single hard battery and is used to power small portable electronic equipment such as a general-purpose calculator. The use of rechargeable battery equipment, normal high-voltage battery design, long service life, and connection use usually exceeds one year. Most of the batteries have a low self-discharge rate, cannot be used for a long time, and can hold power for a long time.

1.5V AA/AAA Alkaline Battery

1.5V AA AAA alkaline batteries are common. This small battery is usually used for hand-held electric cylinders, remote controllers and other products. In comparison to the warranty period of the defective battery, other types of battery replacement are not recommended for regular use.

3.7V Rechargeable Battery

3.7V is a rechargeable battery. We recommend this battery 3.7V rechargeable batteries to power the led strip lights because they can be used for multiple charging.

DC12V Battery

This battery is relatively large. We see this battery in the car. Some night markets will use this battery to power LED lights when doing business. And this battery is rechargeable. This battery can power any input led light. Because of this battery’s high capacity, it means it can store more energy per unit weight than other batteries.

How Long Can The Battery Power The Led Strip Lights?

After charging the power, the official battery capacity rating is 85Wh. Equivalent to 90W per reel of LED strip lights performance rating, equivalent to about 1 hour. When the led strip light is not lit, we will completely remove the LED strip light.

How to Extend Battery Life?

In fact, the improvement in battery life is directly related to the dimmer setting. There are certain circumstances, this way will reduce the brightness of the LED strip. For this, we need to use a PWM dimmer suitable for low-voltage DC systems. Connecting the dimmer between the battery pack and the LED strip acts like a “valve” that reduces the brightness without any flickering or color change.

How to Connect The Led Strip Lights to The Battery?

We first find the positive and negative poles of the battery, then connect the positive pole of the LED strip to the positive pole of the battery, and connect the negative pole of the LED strip to the negative pole of the battery. Remember when you don’t need the led strip, you can turn off the power by the switch.

Conclusion

• The battery can easily power the led strip lights.
• AA batteries, 3.7v rechargeable batteries, and DC12V batteries are suitable for the led light strip.
• You can add dimmers, RGB controllers, etc.

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