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24volt LED issues

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Purr24

Member
Location
Pennsylvania
Occupation
Electrician
I have a 100 watt LED Driver powering up 2-10' tape LED lights the tape lights are 24vdc and 3watts per foot= 2X30 watts is 60 total watts. The wiring from the driver to the tape lights is #18 gauge aprox 15' lengths. The driver is tripping out with both 10' lengths. I can run 1-10' with out any problems. Tried this with both sets of 10' lengths works fine. But as soon as I connect both 10' lengths the driver trips out in 10 seconds. Is this a voltage drop issue? 18 gauge should be ok. The driver has 5 different taps to increase voltage but don't want to damage the tape
lights. 22/24/26/28/30 VDC. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks
 
G

gar

Senior Member
Location
Ann Arbor, Michigan
Occupation
EE
220110-1956 EST

Purr24:

I can not understand your post.

You have a power supply that appears to be rated at 100 W and 24 V for its maximum output. Have you measured its actual output voltage, and what is the voltage actual value? If you place a 100 W load on the supply what does the voltage change to? Generally I would expect a drop under load. 100 W at 24 V is a current of 4.17 A. If you change the load on the supply at what current and output voltage does the supply actually trip out?

If you test your tape light strip with a voltage variable supply from 20 to 24 V what are your actual current readings vs voltage for each strip?

With these measurements you can now figure out why, and under what conditions trip occurs.

Suppose your power supply supplied exactly 24 V over its current range up to 4.17 A, and at exactly 4.17 A it trips out, then suppose that your strips actually draw 60 W at 24 V which is 2.5 A per strip, and a total of 5.0 A what would you expect to happen?

.
 
LarryFine

LarryFine

Master Electrician Electric Contractor Richmond VA
Location
Henrico County, VA
Occupation
Electrical Contractor
Does each strip have its own home run, or do they share one?

It should be easy to temporarily substitute heavier wire to rule it out.

The behavior you're describing is an overheating power supply.

If it was just the load, it should drop out faster, or even not start.
 
C

curt swartz

Electrical Contractor - San Jose, CA
Location
San Jose, CA
Occupation
Electrical Contractor
A couple comments.

For tape lighting you should be using a class 2 driver and your 100 watt driver would not be listed as class 2. Even if the tape lighting doesn't indicate class 2 requirement it would be virtually impossible to connect tape to a chapter 3 wiring method.

Depending on the design of the tape you can only load many drivers to 50% of their rating. We use a lot of Diode LED VLX5 tape. We started having issues with drivers failing. Tried using a different manufacture of drivers and the tape would just flash even on a standard switch. Finally the driver manufactures told us not to load the drivers more than 50% with high output tape. I'm not sure why 40 watts of high output tape is different than 40 watts of standard output tape is any different but I'm told it make s a big difference.
 
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Purr24

Member
Location
Pennsylvania
Occupation
Electrician
Thanks for all the info and help! Turns out to be the overcurrent protection in the driver is only rated for 2.5 amps. Each strip is 1.4 amps X2 is 2.8 amps. There is the problem. Each strip is a separate 18/2. Add a driver or up the overcurrent protection.
Thanks again

Sent from my Pixel 2 XL using Tapatalk
 
R

retirede

Senior Member
Location
Illinois
Purr24 said:
Thanks for all the info and help! Turns out to be the overcurrent protection in the driver is only rated for 2.5 amps. Each strip is 1.4 amps X2 is 2.8 amps. There is the problem. Each strip is a separate 18/2. Add a driver or up the overcurrent protection.
Thanks again

Sent from my Pixel 2 XL using Tapatalk
Click to expand...

That makes sense now that I think about voltage info in your original post. The only way to get max wattage would be to run at max voltage. 2.5A is the limit at any voltage.
 
Flicker Index

Flicker Index

Senior Member
Location
Pac NW
Occupation
Lights
What happens if you set it to 22v? You didn't say what voltage setting you're using for that matter. Also, how are you measuring the amps? In-line ammeter can add enough resistance to affect the true current. Even at 30v, 2.5A doesn't add up to 100W. so I wonder why the limit is set at 2.5
 
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