Watson A.Name - Watt Sun wrote:
Hey, I agree with you. But instead, I would have used higher voltage
lamps, two in parallel. Decent LEDs were hard to get back in the
'70s. Another solution might be to use neon lamps.

You mean flourescent lights. neon lamps need a high voltage transformer. :-(
you will not want them for emergency lights, as they are often the cause of
the emergency themselves.
BTW also fluorescent lights have many shortcomings, in a cold
environment(Alaska?) they extinguish and won't start at even moderately cold
temperatures. They need some electronics inside the socket and finally last
not longer than special longlife bulbs, that is 6000h, which is not even 1
year. Of course the efficiency is much higher even if you add the loss of
the electronics (which is usually not accounted for).

Here in my building we have flourescent lights in the emergency lights, but
they are always off and only light up at power loss. They have a 12Ah 12V
gel-battery inside and will power the 5W lamp for not even 24h, not enough
if we have a blackout like in NY. But fortunaterly that has never happened
so far.

ciao Ban
Bordighera,Italy