If you’re buying LED Strip Lights don’t forget your power supply. LED Strip Lights count on a peripheral unit called a power supply, also referred to as a transformer or driver, which is required to make sure they are work.
Power supplies can be found in many shapes and sizes, which range from very basic ‘plug and play’ units to commercial style transformers which may be hardwired into your mains supply ecopac led driver. You may also hear these power supplies referred to as ‘transformers.’ The reason being as well as powering the LED Strip Lights these units are made to ‘transform’ the mains 230V AC to a low voltage 12V DC therefore making the supply applicable to the strip lights.
There are always a few considerations you need to make as it pertains to selecting the kind of power you need.
Firstly, do you wish to manage to plug into a wall socket, or are you about to hardwire your LED Strip Lights into a light switch?
If the answer to the former question is ‘yes’ then you will demand a typical ‘plug and play’ driver. Here is the most basic supply available and allows quick and easy setup for standard domestic applications using a wall plug power source. The whole unit is made up of black transformer, a kettle-lead with a typical UK mains 3-prong plug and a 12V male connector which attaches to the LED Strip using a corresponding female connector. The whole unit closely resembles a lap top charger and is about 2 metres in length.
For more technical applications or where there’s no wall plug available an alternative solution mains power is available. As opposed to a kettle lead these supplies feature an amount of mains wire which may be wired directly up to the mains supply.
Along with choosing the kind of power, you may also need to find out the size of it. These supplies can be found in varying sizes, ranging anywhere from the low 20watts to many times this figure. These figures described the utmost ‘load’ that the supply can manage. The ‘load’ of your LED Strip Lights is calculated by taking the wattage per metre and multiplying it by the amount of metres you are using. As an example, if the wattage per metre is 7.2W and you are using 10 metres, then the entire load is 72watts. It is very important to be sure that this load does not exceed the utmost load on your supply, otherwise you’ll experience performance issues with your strip lights, such as voltage drop, and reduce the life span of your lights.
