210 Upgrade Build with LED Build
- Thread starter nuclearheli
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nuclearheli
Member
Staring down the barrel of Irene. This is going to suck:worried:
I hope most of the water stays inside your tank where it belongs. Good luck!
== John ==
nuclearheli
Member
As the crow flies I am just close enough to the coast to have a supply of fresh sea water for a year. Hope the generator keeps performing as it has all summer. Has taken me through two outages already. Real test is about to begin. BRING IT ON. If there are no posts by Monday consider nuclearheli as crashed burned and melted down.
Hey Heli, I like the idea on the use of the pleds. Question for you. Do the pleds use voltage when the fixture is operating? If not what triggers them to come on and do their job in the event of a short? Obviously you'd have to factor in the vF of the pleds as you would with the leds and stay within the range of your driver. But what I'm wondering is if you have to factor in the forward voltages of both combined when choosing a driver? Hope that makes sense.
nuclearheli
Member
PLED's are shunts, they are totally "off" when the circuit is normal, no voltage or current passes through the PLED. If you use your DVM you will not measure anything through the PLED.
PLED's are rated based on a trigger voltage. For a single 3w LED the trigger voltage on the PLED is 6 volts.
This is how it works. If you have a series of LED's and measure the voltage at each LED you should get the forward voltage, in my case 3.x volts depending on the color. You can measure each LED and always get the same voltage. But if one of the LED's fails open then the circuit is broken and the voltage measured at the + of that LED, across a ground on the driver is the maximum voltage that the driver puts out. In my case my drivers put out 285 volts. So it doesn't matter where the LED fails, the voltage will always be the maximum voltage that the driver puts out when any LED fails open.
The PLED reacts to the change in voltage. Under normal operating conditions the voltage across the LED is 3.x volts and the trigger voltage of the PLED is 6 volts so the PLED does nothing at all. When the LED fails open the PLED senses voltage that exceeds 6 volts and in a nanosecond responds and is triggered. It then passes the full current of the string which is passed along to the next LED and everything stay's on except the one LED that failed. The actual forward voltage of the PLED's I used is 1.3 volts. They maintain a low voltage in order to minimize any heat buildup.
You don't need to factor anything into the build for the PLED. You can purchase PLED's for 6, 9 and higher voltages so in very large multiple LED strings you can protect several LED's with one PLED. For our builds it makes sense to get the PLED that triggers at the lowest voltage to protect single LED's.
This also works very well for parallel builds as well. Parallel builds are nothing more than multiple series builds where you share the overall current with each string. The problem with parallel builds has always been protecting other strings if one string fails open and the current is then increased in the other strings. With PLED's protecting each LED in the series you cannot get into a situtation where the string dies and the current to the other strings suddenly increases. The PLED's always pass the current around the failed LED.
Votage means nothing when using PLED's. All you need to do is select a PLED that has a trigger voltage low enough to sense the failure of a single LED. Again, for the 3w cree's the 6volt PLED is perfect.
Excellent. Thanks for the explanation. I'm still in the planning stages of my build and am leaning towards parallel strings so I was wondering how they would do.
Would it make some sense to assume that in the event of an open short and the pled triggers on that if it is maintaining a low 1.3 volts then that would decrease resistance in that string. So I would probably see some changes in current on the strings.
I see everybody going with the 1ohm/5w resistors and 1 amp fuses on their builds. Where most people are using the resistors as a simple way to check voltage drop across strings. Wondering if you have any thoughts on using resistors (not necessarily the 1ohm.5w) as current limiting devices and more carefully chosen fuses to keep strings balanced and protected.
nuclearheli
Member
You might but it should be so small it should not be noticed assuming you don't have many LED failures which is unlikely.
As you see from my thread I am not experienced in parallel builds. However in my opinion and only my opinion I believe people thinking they are protecting their strings with fuses have a false sense of security. It's very unlikely that even a fast blow fuse will react in time to save all the LED's in another string if you have a serious current surge, which I believe you will if you open an entire string by one failure without any additional protection like PLED's. There is a reason why industrial sign and light makers use PLED's. As far as the resistors go again I cannot bring any valuable information to the table on these types of builds. As you see I went for the simple and clean approach. I realize working with "higher" voltage drivers is not everyone's cup of tea however.
nuclearheli
Member
Copying is one of the best forms of flattery.
Interesting day. Decided to stay home to get some storm chores done. We live in a town that has one of the major costal evacuation routes going through it. I have never seen so many boats OUT of the water at one time not to mention the steady stream of packed cars.
Sounds familiar as I grew up in Louisiana and would have to say the worst I had ever been through was Hurricane Andrew. We were with out power for 2.5 weeks and I was lucky that I didn't have a tank set up at that time. Good thing hot water/stove was all natural gas so we did a bunch of cooking on the grill to use the stuff as it defrosted from freezers.
You should be fine with the generator I wish we would have had one back then....LOL
You should be fine with the generator I wish we would have had one back then....LOL
nuclearheli
Member
Hope you've got enough fuel. Our thoughts (and prayers) are with you!
I was in the great ice storm of '98. My Brothers in law drove up a generator from Long Island (we lived in Gouverneur, east of Watertown, about 2 miles north of Syracuse).
I drove to meet them in Syracuse - we found out, once you run out of fuel, they can't get in emergency vehicles becasue they can't refuel. So they would have been stuck, I drove to meet them somewhere I knew I could refuel at.
We were without power for about 3 weeks. My wife even baked a cake in our grill! She got to be really good at it - I was collecting firewood most of the day
Then when we moved to California she threw the Grill away. Man it made a loud noise going in the trash truck ... I bet he was not happy.
I was in the great ice storm of '98. My Brothers in law drove up a generator from Long Island (we lived in Gouverneur, east of Watertown, about 2 miles north of Syracuse).
I drove to meet them in Syracuse - we found out, once you run out of fuel, they can't get in emergency vehicles becasue they can't refuel. So they would have been stuck, I drove to meet them somewhere I knew I could refuel at.
We were without power for about 3 weeks. My wife even baked a cake in our grill! She got to be really good at it - I was collecting firewood most of the day
Then when we moved to California she threw the Grill away. Man it made a loud noise going in the trash truck ... I bet he was not happy.
== John ==
nuclearheli
Member
Still here. All power phone cable and internet out since 10 last night. Never thought I would miss the news. Fish are enjoying beautiful weather. The tank is running normally. Generator running flawless. Making sure we stay lean on power usage not knowing how long we will be out. But based on our current fuel usage over the past 10 hours we should be good for at least a week or two maybe even more.
He shows brand and everything a few pages back (Generac comes to mind without going and looking myself) and is run off propane as he has a large tank for his house but generator can also be used with natural gas as well.....
nuclearheli
Member
Correct, Generac 20kW propane fired. I have nothing else to do today but calculate my propane usage. Pretty sad huh? I figure I have just over two weeks. But if we turn off the AC that could easily take me to three weeks. Based on the latest weather forecast it's going to get nice and cool tonight so off with the AC.
Never though I would say this but my two favorite companies at this moment are Generac and Verizonwireless. Both have been performing flawlessly. 4G is pretty cool also.
Staring at the fish tank and wondering, do you think they sense the barometric pressure and know we just had a hurricane? If they do it doesn't look like it bothered them very much.
Besides draining down the pool for the fourth time and removing a boat load of leaves nothing much else to do so you know what....... :beer:
Glad that ugly bi.zitch is gone.
jkopp36
New member
Thanks, didn't catch the post on it before. Real close to installing the exact same unit myself but we're all electric so I have to get a tank put in too which increases the headaches involved a little. Still doable though. Again, glad yours is working well for you and here's to hoping you have mains back way before you run out of propane (although I'm guessing you may able to get more before that happens)! :beer:
nuclearheli
Member
22 hours 45 minutes. Was sitting watching yet another crummy DVD with the quiet hum of the generator outside. Then the generator just shut down and my DVD kept on playing and the lights were still on. No cable yet but plenty if power. Thank you generac. One of my better investments. The tank never missed a beat. All lights and powerheads are on a ups which kept everything going until the generator kicked in. Its set on a 30 second delay.
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