On the Batfish we've come up with an alternate way of hooking up emergency lighting, which we hope to try out soon. Our boat has had a lot of power cabling removed for profit in the engine rooms, which makes it rather difficult to send power fore and aft.
Emergency lights are meant to be supplied with 250V, but with the advent of dimmable compact fluorescent lights (CFL's), we've come up with the idea to have one or two Uninterrupted Power Supplies (UPS) in each compartment supplying power to the emergency lights. The UPS supplies 120V, but with two 15W dimmable bulbs at half power (60W equivalent light at full power), each bulb would be like a 25W bulb running at full power.
As an example, a 300W UPS can run two dimmable 15W bulbs in series for about 2.5 hours - in series they only draw a total of 15W, but in parallel they would draw 30W. Of course, the emergency lighting wiring has to be modified with a standard plug in each compartment. This has been partially accomplished in certain compartments on our boat from wiring and batteries being removed. We'll let you know how it goes.
