How Long Do Batteries Last In Flameless LED Candles?

Flameless LED candles are a recently popular substitute for regular wax candles. They have a fair amount of advantages compared to the traditional candle with the main one being safety since LED candles have no live fire.

That said, they require batteries to produce their light. The life of a battery inside a flameless LED candle varies depending on a few factors.

The AA battery of a flameless LED candle will theoretically last between 90-130 hours depending on the strength of the battery and the strength of the LED candle. If the candle uses less power than 0.06W it may last upwards of 200 hours at most with most AA or AAA batteries.

How Much Power Do Flameless LED Candles Use?

In terms of electrical power, flameless LED candles usually use very little since the only electrical load in these candles are a small LED.

Flameless LED candles usually operate on 3 Volts (V) and typically use roughly 0.06 Watts (W). This in turn means that they also run with an electrical current of 20 milliamperes (mA) and have a total electrical resistivity of 150 ohms (Ω).

These numbers are generalized based on what most flameless LED candles that are available on the market use. There are stronger candles that may use up to 0.5W and operate on 12V.

However, since most LED candles for decorative use operate at 3V and 0.06W we will use these numbers as the baseline for our coming calculations.

How Much Power Do Batteries Contain?

The power of a single battery mainly depends on its chemical composition. Most AA and AAA batteries are alkaline based but can also be comprised of other chemical compounds such as nickel–metal hydride and nickel–cadmium.

These batteries normally give off 1.2-1.5V. This means that in order to power a 3V LED candle it would require 2 batteries connected in series to produce the required voltage.

While the voltage is important to know for batteries it is also key that we know how many ampere hours (Ah) it contains. This is because Ah actually describes how much electrical current the battery can supply before it is out of electrical energy.

While the amount of Ah a battery contains depends on its chemical composition and the manufacturer it is generally somewhere in the range of 1.8-2.6Ah.

Since the range is quite big for this we will simply assume that the Ah of the batteries is 2.2Ah for our calculations since it is the median for the range.

As previously concluded, LEDs are a rather small light source that in this instance only uses up 20mAh, and because we are measuring this in mAh it is appropriate that we convert the Ah of the battery to mAh. To do this we simply multiply the Ah by 1000 to get the mAh value. That means that 2.2Ah becomes 2200mAh.

For a more detailed explanation of batteries and how they function we recommend you go here.

How Long Batteries Last In Flameless LED Candle

Now that we have some numbers we can calculate how long batteries realistically should last in flameless LED candles.

We know that these candles normally operate at 3V and have a power of 0.06W. If we divide the power by its voltage we get to know how big the current is through the LED.

• 0.06W/3V = 0.02A.

This means that the current of the LED candle is 0.02A or 20mA.

From here it is quite simple. We know since before that a battery has a total ampere capacity of 2200mAh. This number implies that during one hour of use it can produce a current of 2200mA.

We also previously concluded that these candles would require 2 batteries, but since they also needed to be connected in series it has no impact on the total capacity. The capacity would only change if they are connected in series, which would cause the voltage to remain unchanged.

This means that in order to find out how many hours a battery can support a flameless LED candle we simply divide the mAh of the battery by the candle’s mA.

• 2200mAh / 20mA = 110 hours

This means that generally speaking, an average AA battery inside of a flameless LED candle should last approximately 110 hours.

That said, we did simplify the total mAh of batteries earlier. If we were to look at the full range of batteries paired with this LED candle it would look more like this:

• 1800mAh / 20mA = 90 hours.
• 2600mAh / 20mA = 130 hours.

With this range, we can conclude that a pair of batteries would last around 90 to 130 hours in a flameless LED candle.

How Long Do Flameless LED Candles last?

The LEDs in flameless LED candles have a much longer lifespan than the batteries used to power them. While the lifespan of an LED depends on factors such as its surrounding temperature and usage, the lifespan of them is pretty long.

Flameless LED candles normally last over 100 000 hours. If these candles never ran out of battery they could theoretically last over 11 years before breaking.

That said, LEDs don’t really “break” as most traditional bulbs do. They rather dull down in brightness and potentially shift colour over time. This means that it is also theoretically possible for them to last even longer, if the definition of “lasting” means that they still produce light, no matter how much light it actually ends up being.

While these LEDs can last over 100 000 hours, their batteries do not last nearly as long as we’ve previously discussed.

In order to run a flameless LED candle for 100 000 hours, it would require between 1540-2200 batteries in total depending on the quality and strength of the batteries.

This number is based on the 90-130 hours per battery charge we discussed earlier, but also 2x since we established we need two batteries per charge.

Summary

To summarize, you can expect a regular AA or AAA battery to last somewhere around 100 hours in a flameless LED candle.

100 hours is definitely enough for special occasions where you want a candle but don’t want to run the risk of having things unintentionally burn. That said, it might become expensive to use these frequently since high-quality batteries can get quite expensive.

You can also calculate these numbers for your own flameless LED candles if you have their voltage and wattage. Once you have these numbers you can follow the logic previously used in this article to determine how long your batteries should last in these candles.