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I would like to power a 230V LED lightbulb with a 9V battery. I assume I'll have to dissect it... Surely there must be some sort of power-converter and rectifier from 230V-AC to something a lot lower DC in there somewhere, so I could attach a battery on the other side of it.

What I'm worried about - apart for it not working - is the battery becomming too hot (because of to high current) or the LEDs burning up...

So has anybody tried this? How can it be done? What should I watch out for?

Alternatively, would it be possible to dissect one of those flourcent "spiral-tube" lightbulbs and make them run on a 9V battery? How? What must I watch out for?

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    \$\begingroup\$ Related, in terms of power consumption: electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/65654/… \$\endgroup\$
    – Martin
    Commented Jul 14, 2014 at 10:33
  • \$\begingroup\$ How big (in mAh or Ah) is the battery? ... \$\endgroup\$
    – Spoon
    Commented Jul 14, 2014 at 11:26
  • \$\begingroup\$ Someone on Hackaday.com made a battery-powered CFL lamp, I'd suggest searching there. \$\endgroup\$
    – John U
    Commented Jul 14, 2014 at 12:02

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If I were doing this, I'd consider the situation a bit; it's likely that there will be a lowish DC voltage that feeds the LEDs but this may indeed be a lot higher than 9V dc because there may be several 3V LEDs all wired in series. I'd also consider that the AC rectification and conversion to the appropriate lowish DC voltage will be better than 80% efficient.

On that basis I'd be tempted to buy/make/build a low power inverter that takes the 9 volts from the battery and converts it to 230 VAC for the lamp.

I'd be interested in knowing the power of the lamp because this power will need to be supplied by the battery. For instance, if the LED lamp were 5 watts, the 9 volt battery would need to supply over 500 mA to the home-spun inverter plus, maybe another 200 mA due to inefficiencies in the inverter.

Ultimately, only you know why you are taking this approach and if I really thought about it properly, I'd buy some LEDs and start from scratch and forget about dismantling an AC LED lamp.

EDIT - regarding the 230VAC inverter - given that it's only going to be used to feed the lamp and that the lamp's internal buck regulation might easily work with an AC voltage that is several hundred hertz, the inverter design becomes a little more straightforward magnetically in that a smaller transformer could be used operating at say 500 Hz. It's also quite likely that the lamp may work efficiently at 200 VAC or maybe a bit lower.

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The current for such a large LED is likely to be far more than a 9V battery can supply. Even if it did work, as you guessed the cell would get very hot and possibly leak, or at best die very quickly.

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