Discuss Calculating volt drop on 24v, supplying LED lights. in the UK Electrical Forum area at ElectriciansForums.net

HappyHippyDad

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I'm getting a little confused about volt drop and 24v.
I want to fit an LED strip light. 8m of lights 7w/m.
It would be easier to have the 24v driver approx 10m from the beginning of the strip of the LED strip.
I'm not sure where to start to know if this will work without any effect on the lights due to volt drop.
Is it 18m x 2.3A x 44 = 1.76v?

The 2.3A is 56w/24v
The 44 is based on 1mm

I'm getting a bit mixed up between 24v and 230v.

Is this 1.76v correct and is this taken off the 24v? If so, how do I know how much VD is ok for these lights? Is there a standard allowable VD as with 230v?

Cheers all.
 
The voltage does not come into it, its just ohms law a current flowing though a resistance.
the manufactures are the only ones who will know minimum voltage , if in doubt use thicker cable or parallel (like a ring) or even feed from the centre.
 
Have the manufacturers given any voltage tolerances for the LEDs? Normally they would state maximum length of tape per driver.
 
Thanks for the replys so far.
I can't feed it like a ring, or from the centre, due to constraints.
The manufacturer states 10m can be accomadated, but it gives no specification on acceptable voltage lose.
I think I need to place the driver closer.

But, I will push my luck and ask if anyone thinks this will work, I realise you will say it depends on MI, but I'm asking if anyone has done it and it was fine....

24v driver.
10m of 2.5mm or 4mm cable from driver to beginning of tape. 8m of tape. 2.3A current.
 
Frankly, I think it will be fine, what you suggested. However, why not just connect 10m of 2.5mm to the driver output and measure what voltage you get at the end?
 
Frankly, I think it will be fine, what you suggested. However, why not just connect 10m of 2.5mm to the driver output and measure what voltage you get at the end?
I could do that, but I then need to know the tolerance levels (in terms of VD) of the actual LED strip and they don't give that information, at least I can't find it on any spec.

I could easily place the driver closer, however there is another LED strip on the other side of the room and I am trying to supply both sets of 8m strips with the same driver. The reason for this is that they will be colour changing and dimmable with a remote. I have not installed this scenario before and assumed that each set of lights (on a different driver) would have a separate remote, and I don't want the customer to have to use 2 remotes. Could both set of striplights be controlled with the same remote if using 2 separate drivers?
 
I take your point, but if you found that the VD was negligible with 2.5mm or if you had to go to 4mm. then you wouldn't have to worry at the feed-in side. I suspect, from my experience of 12V and 24V electrics on boats, that the VD will be negligible in the scenario you depict.
 
I take your point, but if you found that the VD was negligible with 2.5mm or if you had to go to 4mm. then you wouldn't have to worry at the feed-in side. I suspect, from my experience of 12V and 24V electrics on boats, that the VD will be negligible in the scenario you depict.
In that case Pirate it would be good to pick your brains about what is 'negligible'?

Are my calculations in the opening post correct? If so, is 1.76v negligible?

If 1.76v is too much, I could use 1.5mm or 2.5mm cable instead, getting a VD of 1.2V and 0.75V respectively, this is assuming my calculations are right for 24V.
 
Regs for ELV lighting give us a 5% VD allowance, so 1.2V for 24V lighting.

Each metre of LED tape will have a VD: tape closest to the origin will be carrying the most current, so will have the greatest VD per m, and tape furthest from the origin carries the least current, so will have the lowest VD/m. This could be calculated to a reasonable degree of accuracy if we knew the CSA of the conductors running the length of the tape. But we don't, so we cant ?

I've written a VD spreadsheet, which is pretty handy when working out VD for ELV. Playing around with the numbers for the tape you have (7W/m), if 10m of tape has the full 1.2V drop, then 8m would have a drop of ~0.8V. This would allow a drop of 0.4V for the 10m cable, which could be achieved by using 2.5mm cable.

Obviously, the above makes a couple of assumptions which we just don't know, so don't take it too seriously. In this case, trial and error is the only way!
 
Several manufacturers offer remote control of multiple strips with one remote control. Each strip fed by it's own driver and with a receiver for each strip, that can be synced to the one remote.
Like this for example:

 
Let's go back to the fundamentals.

VD works the same at any voltage, and for these small cables and small currents we can ignore whether it's AC or DC. So your original numbers were correct, use the current of the 24V circuit and the tabulated VD per amp per metre, and you will get the VD of the 24V circuit. The crucial take-away here is that while the VD per amp is the same as on a 240V circuit, each volt is ten times more precious. A 4.8V drop on a 24V circuit is a whopping 20% lost, compared with only 2% on a 240V circuit.

How much can you afford to lose? To answer this we have to understand a bit about LEDs and the circuit inside the tape. First of all, note that constant-current LEDs and constant-voltage ones require a completely different approach. All normal tape is constant-voltage so that's what I'll describe.

LED chips themselves are diodes; they have an exponential relationship between current and voltage, i.e. they do not obey Ohm's law like a resistor. As the applied voltage is increased, nothing much happens at first, then the current starts shooting up to an unworkable level with only a tiny additional increase in voltage. The importance of this is that is difficult or impossible to simply apply a voltage and expect to get a certain current or power, as you could with a tungsten lamp, heater or typical AC mains appliance. You have to control the current through the LED chips, and let the voltage developed across them be what it wants to be. For most white LEDs the voltage is around 3V at any reasonable current.

This is of course constant-current driving. The driver sends a known current through the LEDs and the voltage developed across them is stable and predictable and therefore so is the power. But constant-current driving is a nuisance, because all the loads have to be in series and matched for current (although they can have different voltages). Constant-voltage is much more practical because loads can simply be connected in parallel.

So we compromise. We use a constant-voltage supply e.g. 24V, a series string of LEDs making up something less than this voltage (e.g. six 3V LEDs making 18V) and then lose the difference of 6V in a current-limiting resistor that behaves like an approximate current source. Every six LEDs along a 24V tape are therefore wired in series with a resistor or two, and all such strings are connected in parallel by the bus wires along the tape. Minute variations in LED forward voltage are now swamped by the voltage across the resistors, so all the strings pass almost exactly the same current at a given supply voltage. We sacrifice the 25% power wastage in the resistors (6V of the 24V is dropped rather than used in LEDs to produce light) for the convenience of constant-voltage operation.

But now we start to see the impact of supply voltage variations on the LED current. The current-limiting resistors obey ohms law and drop about 1/4 of the supply voltage. Therefore as the supply voltage varies around the nominal 24V, the current will vary by four times the percentage. A 1% variation in voltage will cause approximately a 4% variation in current, for approximately a 5% variation in power. A 25% reduction in voltage (to 18V, about the forward voltage of the six LEDs) leaves nothing across the resistor so the current and power fall to near zero. (24V tape will not light at all at 15V)

So to operate the tape within spec, voltage drop is quite critical and should be kept to a few percent. However, light output does not decrease in proportion to the voltage drop, so it is not quite as critical as the numbers might suggest.

Tl, DR: 2.5mm cable will be fine!
 
Last edited:
I have not installed this scenario before and assumed that each set of lights (on a different driver) would have a separate remote, and I don't want the customer to have to use 2 remotes. Could both set of striplights be controlled with the same remote if using 2 separate drivers?
Look at systems where you can get RGB (or RGBW) repeaters. They're basically slave controllers which have their own local power supply, and allow you to overcome limits of cable length or numbers of strips and keep just one controller for the whole shebang.

1619054041609.png
 
Let's go back to the fundamentals.

VD works the same at any voltage, and for these small cables and small currents we can ignore whether it's AC or DC. So your original numbers were correct, use the current of the 24V circuit and the tabulated VD per amp per metre, and you will get the VD of the 24V circuit. The crucial take-away here is that while the VD per amp is the same as on a 240V circuit, each volt is ten times more precious. A 4.8V drop on a 24V circuit is a whopping 20% lost, compared with only 2% on a 240V circuit.

How much can you afford to lose? To answer this we have to understand a bit about LEDs and the circuit inside the tape. First of all, note that constant-current LEDs and constant-voltage ones require a completely different approach. All normal tape is constant-voltage so that's what I'll describe.

LED chips themselves are diodes; they have an exponential relationship between current and voltage, i.e. they do not obey Ohm's law like a resistor. As the applied voltage is increased, nothing much happens at first, then the current starts shooting up to an unworkable level with only a tiny additional increase in voltage. The importance of this is that is difficult or impossible to simply apply a voltage and expect to get a certain current or power, as you could with a tungsten lamp, heater or typical AC mains appliance. You have to control the current through the LED chips, and let the voltage developed across them be what it wants to be. For most white LEDs the voltage is around 3V at any reasonable current.

This is of course constant-current driving. The driver sends a known current through the LEDs and the voltage developed across them is stable and predictable and therefore so is the power. But constant-current driving is a nuisance, because all the loads have to be in series and matched for current (although they can have different voltages). Constant-voltage is much more practical because loads can simply be connected in parallel.

So we compromise. We use a constant-voltage supply e.g. 24V, a series string of LEDs making up something less than this voltage (e.g. six 3V LEDs making 18V) and then lose the difference of 6V in a current-limiting resistor that behaves like an approximate current source. Every six LEDs along a 24V tape are therefore wired in series with a resistor or two, and all such strings are connected in parallel by the bus wires along the tape. Minute variations in LED forward voltage are now swamped by the voltage across the resistors, so all the strings pass almost exactly the same current at a given supply voltage. We sacrifice the 25% power wastage in the resistors (6V of the 24V is dropped rather than used in LEDs to produce light) for the convenience of constant-voltage operation.

But now we start to see the impact of supply voltage variations on the LED current. The current-limiting resistors obey ohms law and drop about 1/4 of the supply voltage. Therefore as the supply voltage varies around the nominal 24V, the current will vary by four times the percentage. A 1% variation in voltage will cause approximately a 4% variation in current, for approximately a 5% variation in power. A 25% reduction in voltage (to 18V, about the forward voltage of the six LEDs) leaves nothing across the resistor so the current and power fall to near zero. (24V tape will not light at all at 15V)

So to operate the tape within spec, voltage drop is quite critical and should be kept to a few percent. However, light output does not decrease in proportion to the voltage drop, so it is not quite as critical as the numbers might suggest.

Tl, DR: 2.5mm cable will be fine!
Really helpful Lucien, thankyou.
Glanced at my phone this morning whilst about to head out of the door, and read 'lets go back to the fundamentals'.
I settled down with a cup of tea instead ?
 

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