Electrical Help Please

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Rorie

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I am looking at putting in LED lighting for my fish room above each tank. I have found 5m strips of LED which require a 12v 3 amp plug.

If I want to have 5 of these strips working together, how do I do it? Is there a control unit I can buy? Or do I just buy a different transformer? Would it still be 12v, but 3amp x 5 =14 amp
 
You could operate say, a 9A supply over the strips in parallel, which gives you 12V across each line but the amperage is divided. If you are plugging into a standard uk mains ring, you shouldn't go above 13A peak (thats needing to take into account any surges).

However, you'll probably find yourself hunting and paying a price for such a power supply. Finding a 12V 3A inverter will be much easier, buy x5 and you can plug them into your ring by splitting over a couple of sockets.
 
You're looking, ideally, for a constant current driver that churns out 12V. Usually they quote a total wattage they can handle. I've seen bigger rigs set up using the power supplies from computers (they generally have wires for 12V and 5V) when budget was an issue, although you've got to keep them dry and they generally have fans.

Otherwise the largest readily available led driver I've seen can handle 150W of lights, which may or may not handle your lights depending on what you're using.

Other thing worth remembering, is that the transformer will always use some power, so any calculation you were thinking of for mains purposes will need to take this into account. In other words, you can't do the calculation 36W of lights at 12V uses a certain number of amps, you need to look at the power input of the controller against the voltage it's taking, so a 3 amp fuse would handle up to 720 Watts at 240V on the driver, and probably slightly less in light terms.
 
Thanks for the replies.

I am getting an electrician out in 2 weeks to finish off the bits i'm not confident doing myself. I have asked them to do this bit for me too :)

Rorie
 
Keep us posted. Will be interesting to see what an electrician makes of it. I suspect that they'll treat it a lot like a bathroom.
 

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