LED Technical Tips – What is LED Voltage Drop?

How do you avoid voltage drop with your LED landscape lighting and flexible LED strip installations?

Perhaps you are considering a LED landscape lighting project this summer and want to install LED lights along a concrete or rock wall or along a driveway or outcropping. Or perhaps you’ve seen our new crown moulding for LED lighting and are remodelling or building a large space with many linear feet to cover. How do you do this with a minimum of wiring and a minimal amount of power supplies? The first thing to consider is LED voltage drop. “Voltage drop” means that the farther a LED light source is away from the power supply and/or colour controller, the less voltage that lighting product receives. This can make the LED products closest to the power supply look much brighter than the lights farther down the line. Fear not, there are solutions to this problem. The easiest solution to correct the LED voltage drop problem is to make several “home runs” to the power supply. “Home run” means that you would connect each reel of flexible LED strip, or each group of LED products directly to the power supply as opposed to connecting products together in series. Some LED products such as flexible LED strip, have a built-in maximum run to the power supply. Flexible LED strip is sold in 5 meters (16 FT) reels as that is the maximum footage of that product that can be connected to a power supply without signal degradation. This wiring diagram explains this type of installation in more detail. Another solution is to use one or more data repeaters in your RGB LED installation. Data repeaters more or less reinforce the signal, keeping the reels farthest away from the power supply operating without a delay. This wiring diagram illustrates an installation like this. And finally, consider wire gauge. The farther you go from the power supply, the thicker the wire should be. Never use wire smaller than 18 AWG. This wiring diagram has a useful chart to help you to determine wire gauge size appropriate for your LED lighting project. If you have questions or need help in selecting the right size wire, power supplies, and accessories for your installation, one of our technicians can help you. Give us a call at 775-841-4490 or email for help. Thank you as always for coming to TheLEDLight.com. We appreciate your business and look forward to serving you.

By: Mary Wecker

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