Hello, I will be shooting a short film soon and will be using cheap diy lights (like those found on a building site, usually yellow on a tripod) and they run at 500watts per bulb. I was wondering if anyone had any experience using these lights with a battery powered generator or alternative power source to a gas generator?

The shoot will be taking place in an abandoned building with no power around for miles and i was hoping to power atleast 2 lights (maybe 3).

these lamp perform very poorly at transforming electricity to light (you got almost more energy for heating, than for light).
They sucks a lot of amps when starting and light is reddish, especially if you power is on the low side.
you would probably get better chances with fluorescent light or leds panel, but the cost is different too.
if you use 3x 500W , just make sure you do not switch on all lights at same time and the generator can draw at least 2x the power needed (in that case 3000W).

Thank you very much, i will be looking into fluorescents and see if i can stretch the costs.

If you are willing to use construction lights, You are true HC indie - so think indie, think what runs 12V DC gives high output,
you guessed it! car headlights - now get some HID bulbs 5300-6000K and maybe even use the same fixtures as the construction lights and viola.

Now car batt is good for 55ah
HID bulb is 35w = roughly 3amps
so you can run a single light for 55/3=18.3h

this is the best bang for the buck, if you are counting real hard!

Hope this gets your imagination going
-Kaspar