# Inexpensive EL Wire using AC?



## austenandrews (Aug 22, 2010)

I want to use some EL wire in a yard prop this year. There's plenty of inexpensive wire but it's all battery powered. I need AC power to run it all month. But the AC powered stuff I've seen is high end and pricey.

Is there a place to buy cheap EL wire that uses AC? Or alternately, is there an adapter that people use or an easy hack for a battery pack?


----------



## corey872 (Jan 10, 2010)

Not an EL wire guru, but I don't see why you couldn't replace the battery pack with a power supply of the same rating. Though keep in mind, EL wire needs AC power anyway, so there must be a small inverter with the battery pack. You might be able to just bypass it all and run AC directly to the wire!

But if you want to replace the batteries: if the EL wire runs off 2 AA batteries, that would be 1.5V x 2, so a 3 volt DC supply would work great. If it happened to run off 4 AA's that would be 1.5V x 4 or 6 VDC. If it happened to be for a car, that would likely be 12V.

As far as power supply amp rating, I'm seeing EL wire at up to 1.5 watts per meter, and it's always good to have a higher amperage power supply than needed. So the equation would basically be: meters of EL wire x 1.5 watts / Voltage = minimum amperage required.

ie - 10 meters EL wire x 1.5 watts = 15 watts total / 12 volt supply = 1.25 amps required. Figure some inverter losses and an 'oversize' factor for the power supply, and a 12 volt / 3 amp (or higher) power supply starts to look pretty nice.


----------

