> I've also been fiddling a bit with an old (couple of decades) Exide 
 > emergency lighting box model ESS.  This is one of a bunch of these 
 > 
 > This thing was originally designed to hold a "wet" 6v/30AH battery 
 > 
 > Anyone know how long emergency lights are supposed to stay lit?
I have one that sounds identical to what you describe; I got it from a 
building that was being remodeled. The unit had been unplugged for several 
years when I obtained it. All I did was plug 'er in and wait until it started 
taking a charge. That took several hours.
I've had it run for well over an hour during an outage, maybe even a couple 
of hours.
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