Parallel-Series wiring

What are the drawbacks of doing this? Here is an example HLG has on their website. It just so happens I'm using 1 HLG-320H-c2800 for 2 HLG288s. This illustration is indicating I can wire up 4 boards using the parallel-series configuration, which would free up a used driver for me. Can someone elaborate any positives or negatives to wiring this way? Also the boards wired in parallel, are they susceptible to thermal runaway?

That will work fine. Most of the better LED boards use matched voltage bin LEDs, so thermal runway is not usually a risk. Even if two of the boards in parallel drop out or become disconnected that driver will not overcurrent the remaining boards.

The advantage of wiring in parallel is it keeps output voltages lower which is usually safer.

I would wire them differently to the diagram. I would have the active lead going to the first + connector then exiting the second + connector to connect the second board instead of having separate wires to each of the top boards. Then do the same with the bottom boards with the – connectors back to the driver. It's just neater that way.

Shouldn't be a problem , its only 4 boards, not 12.

You would only get the same power out of the driver but it would be spread across 4 boards so each board would be a bit more efficient, a bit cooler, can be a fair bit closer to canopy. Better light spread.

If you ran them all in series, it could be over the available voltage the driver can supply, where running them like this will just half the current. Its just a way of making that driver workable for that situation.

coreywebster said:

Shouldn't be a problem , its only 4 boards, not 12.

You would only get the same power out of the driver but it would be spread across 4 boards so each board would be a bit more efficient, a bit cooler, can be a fair bit closer to canopy. Better light spread.

If you ran them all in series, it could be over the available voltage the driver can supply, where running them like this will just half the current. Its just a way of making that driver workable for that situation.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the reply, currently I'm running 6 HLG288 boards (3 dual sinks) and each dual has it's own 320-2800 driver wired in series. I just saw that info on their website and figured I could free up a driver and use it for another project I have going on.