The new LED lights are one of the best things for boats and trailers that have come along in years. They produce almost no heat, have almost no electrical pull on your battery and the newest ones are more then bright enough to be useful. I now use a small garden tractor size battery for most of the lighting on the boat. A 15 watt solar panel will keep it charged. Lights on the bow, in the cockpit and in the cabin come on at dusk and go off at dawn via a CDS cell switch. They are on there own cheep little circuit and not on the main boats circuit. The running lights are also wired in to it but they have there own switch so they are not on all the time.
You can replace your running light light bulbs easily with LEDs but you need to have a resistor in line with the LED. Radio Shack can help you with this if you want to do it. It is still much easier to just replace the whole fixture...just two wires.
The new cabin lights are great. They are bright and you can burn them all night and still start the boat motor. The price of these have gone down over the last few years, and if you need to replace lighting this is the way to go. They almost never burn out. They are also getting better looking. There are some ugly lights out there. My wife had me rebuild the classic lighting on her 30 year old boat to keep the original look. Only the color of the light is different. LED lighting has more blue than incandescent bulbs. I like it better.
I am now putting a 12 volt lighting system in our house. A pair of 45 watt solar panels keep my deep cycle trolling battery's charged, and they run LED light strips in the house. We have these LED night lights that can stay on in the bathrooms and main rooms all night and often all day. You can see to do most things and they are off the grid. The office area will be next, and that will be a money saver.
