sparked by the Lighting Safety thread, here is the info I compiled recently from my wonderful fellow AZ burner folks on using rope lights. I know nothing about powering anything larger than my hand on the playa so I picked their brains. Feel free to add your own advice.

SUMMARY
LED rope light can be as much as double the cost of standard rope light (which runs off miniature incandescent bulbs). However, LED rope light is reported to last longer, run cooler, and use less wattage.

Rope lights come in 12 volt or 120 volt. I've been told both LED and standard rope light can be run off a 12 volt battery through the use of an inverter. A switch can be added easily to turn it on/off.


ALTERNATE POWER
You can charge the battery itself with a small solar panel, then use the battery at night to run the rope lights. Or you can try the solar powered rope lights. I saw some on eBay and on www.wiedamark.com/

Kayobi said he's used these successfully:
"I own a string of Weidamark's rope solar powered LED lights and they work fine. They also convert nicely to a plug for winter months, though you have to DIY. www.wiedamark.com/index.asp "


BATTERY USE
from Gary:
"Rope lights do not use a lot of power, most of it in 12 volt is less than 2 watts per foot. However an inverter does require some extra power from the battery to convert 12 volts DC to 120 AC. The most efficient way is to buy 12 volt rope light and power it directly from the battery. Simply do an ebay or google search for 12 volt rope light."


POWER CONSUMPTION & CYCLING
from Blank:
"I agree that LEDs are inherently DC, but the AC versions have a cool side effect... less powerconsumption. The eye doesn't need continuous light.. on and off, switched fast enough, works just fine (the television and film industry are grateful for this). While I haven't actually tried it, I think that the 50% of the 'off' time for LEDS
using AC source will more than overcome the inefficiencies of converting the 12v battery to 120AC using a $15 120Watt inverter. "


MORE COMPLEX, BUT MORE ENERGY EFFICIENT SET-UP:
from Master Twist:
"LEDs are inherently DC devices. 120VAC rope lights are designed to use the 120V, but not the AC. They only conduct during half the AC cycle (unless there is a bridge rectifier inline with the LED string). Rectifier or not, the rope will work just ducky on DC power provided the voltage is sufficient.

What does this mean? It means you could power the rope on a 12V battery using a simple (cheap) boost-flyback circuit to crank the voltage to 120VDC. The LEDs will actually glow more evenly without any 60 or 120 Hz "strobe" effect.

Some simple modification of the rope would allow you to run it off 12V as well. This basically involves turning a single long 120V rope into ten short 12V ropes with some wire and a soldering iron. Hit me up OL if you want to experiment. "