Is connecting LED camping lights (around 300 watts or less) to my car battery with the car off bad?

[Harshad Ashraf]

Please suggest best way to handle camping light while we are going for BBQ and all. Keeping Car engine off and using the lights (300W-500W) directly from car battery is fine? 

What is the best way for this.

[Looper]

You may want to consider buying an external sealed lead acid battery and a AC charger to use for use for lighting. I have seen amazon suggesting when I was looking for buying LED lights alternatively I have seen Speedex selling the batteries, so may be you can look at car parts shop.

[Zed]

10 hours ago, Harshad Ashraf said:

Please suggest best way to handle camping light while we are going for BBQ and all. Keeping Car engine off and using the lights (300W-500W) directly from car battery is fine? 

What is the best way for this.

hi @Harshad Ashraf, you need to buy this kind of battery from Speedex Sh. Zayed or Dragon Mart:

Don't forget to buy the charger too, as leaving these uncharged for 3 months will make the batteries dead 😁

 

[Frederic]

12 hours ago, Harshad Ashraf said:

Please suggest best way to handle camping light while we are going for BBQ and all. Keeping Car engine off and using the lights (300W-500W) directly from car battery is fine? 

What is the best way for this.

The LED ones you usually buy from places like dragonmart are maybe advertised as being 300Watts, but they are never that much (marketing)

So lets do a quick calculation:

-Imagine you have a 60Ah battery. This means it can last one hour for a load of 60 Amps.

-A 300W led consumes about 24Amps (Amps = Power divided by Voltage) (300 / 12.6 = 23.8 Amps).

So if the LED is consuming 23.8 Amps on a 60Ah battery you would be in theory good for about 160minutes. 

In reality, you will probably find that these LEDS only consume about 10 amps (many of them even have a provision to plug into the cigarette lighter socket, which has a 10A fuse). If that is the case you would be good for 5-6 hrs.

As mentioned, it is indeed advisable to have an external battery, dedicated for your LED lights, but if the plan is to use it only for a couple of hours (and you have starter cables and a friend with another car that can jumpstart you in case needed), you can give it a try.