Constant Current, Constant Voltage drivers & parallel LED strips?

P

Planet Tomato

Member
Hello.

I have been researching this for weeks now without making any progress, in another thread I was advised that I can drive a number of EBgen2 LED strips connected in parallel with a MeanWell HLG driver which features both Constant Current(CC) and Constant Voltage(CV), it isn't that I don't trust the correctness of what I was told but I want to know if I should go to the trouble of adding a series fuse with each parallel LED strip, also I would very much like some explanation for why the problems that exists in driving parallel LED's with a Constant Current driver isn't a problem for a CC,CV driver.

I have searched and searched and searched online for information about this but I only find articles such as "What is the difference between CC drivers and CV drivers?" and I can't find anything about drivers that are both CC and CV.

Lets say that I have 12 EBgen2 560mm strips in parallel driven by a HLG-320-24B, the individual strips will still present slightly different voltages right? which would result in the current not being shared equally, right?
Then why isn't thermal runaway relevant?

Cheers.
 
Isawthelight

Isawthelight

Well-Known Member
Planet Tomato said:
Hello.

I have been researching this for weeks now without making any progress, in another thread I was advised that I can drive a number of EBgen2 LED strips connected in parallel with a MeanWell HLG driver which features both Constant Current(CC) and Constant Voltage(CV), it isn't that I don't trust the correctness of what I was told but I want to know if I should go to the trouble of adding a series fuse with each parallel LED strip, also I would very much like some explanation for why the problems that exists in driving parallel LED's with a Constant Current driver isn't a problem for a CC,CV driver.

I have searched and searched and searched online for information about this but I only find articles such as "What is the difference between CC drivers and CV drivers?" and I can't find anything about drivers that are both CC and CV.

Lets say that I have 12 EBgen2 560mm strips in parallel driven by a HLG-320-24B, the individual strips will still present slightly different voltages right? which would result in the current not being shared equally, right?
Then why isn't thermal runaway relevant?

Cheers.
Click to expand...
LED Gardener has many DIY guides & answers the constant voltage or constant current questions here->http://ledgardener.com/constant-current-vs-constant-voltage-drivers/

DIY strip build guides ->http://ledgardener.com/diy-led-strip-build-designs-samsung-bridgelux/#more-2416
 
1

1212ham

Well-Known Member
Planet Tomato said:
Lets say that I have 12 EBgen2 560mm strips in parallel driven by a HLG-320-24B, the individual strips will still present slightly different voltages right? which would result in the current not being shared equally, right?
Then why isn't thermal runaway relevant?
Click to expand...
Technically, LEDs should always be driven with cc, but in lighting we don't drive them even close to the edge, so cv works just fine.

Almost all of us run strips in parallel, haven't heard of any runaways. There may be a little difference in current among the strips, but the diodes aren't driven hard enough to go into runaway.

Don't worry about cc vs cv, with good parallel wiring, the strips all run at the same voltage, but the current may vary a little among the strips.

Parallel vs series and cc vs cv are two different things. Both parallel strings and series strings can both be powered by cc or cv.
 
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