Landscape lighting from solar shed.

[Vladivar]

Totally new to solar so idiot proof answers required. Situation is that we have a seasonal travel trailer site that we are going to build a solar shed. The plan is for a 100w panel, controller, 100+ah battery & 700 - 1000w inverter.
I have an understanding of build and set up but there is one aspect I am confused about.
One of the main uses for this system will be to power 12v LED landscape lighting for the camp site. I know I can buy 12v lights that have transformers and plug them into the inverter, but I don’t want that. I want to be able to run the lights direct (via an on/off switch) from the battery. However, I keep reading that 12v LEDs could be damaged by wiring them directly to a 12v deep cycle battery because the battery will not actually be 12v constant. It will be higher at full charge and possibly lower at reduced charge.
What would be ideal would to be able to buy a set of 12v LED deck lights from somewhere like Amazon and just throw away the 110v power block they come with and hook them right to the battery - is that feasible, or is there something else I need to do.

Thx in advance.

 

[gnubie]

It depends on how cheaply the lamps are done, and there's no way to tell from the packaging. Some of these low voltage lamps just string X number of LEDs in series with perhaps a resistor. There's no harm in lower voltage for them, they just don't glow as brightly. If the voltage rises though the LEDs get hot quite quickly and that will shorten their life considerably. The better lamps use a regulator of some type and will work at 14V without any problems at all.

If you want to provide them with bang on 12V you can get a buck boost regulator that will give 12V out regardless of the battery voltage (within reason), 11V-14V > 12V out. That sort of power supply would compensate for voltage drop across your 12V distribution wiring if that is going to be a thing. No idea on how well this one works, so not a recommendation to buy just an example

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I have a 24V line running around my back yard and have adjustable current regulators feeding '12V' LED strips. There's no regulation nor resistor in the strips. It works quite well. It's possible to reduce the power to the LEDs with a bare strip but still keep good brilliance which helps a lot with temperature which in turn gives much longer service life.