Replacement LED driver - output wattage matter?

[lilscorpion]

Have a bunch of 8’ led lights in the garage which I purchased at the local big box. They’ve lasted about 3 years and now a couple are funky flickering. I tested the power converters/drivers and yep, they’re bad.



What difference does the output wattage make? These are 72wats. I’m having a hell of a time finding reasonably priced replacements that are 70, 72, or 75 for whatever reason. 80’s and 60’s appear to be more common.

Fast google says meh, the wattage doesn’t affect brightness. If I don’t know what the leds are, I’m guessing. Does running a higher wattage driver shorten the life of the led? Does a smaller wattage driver somehow cause a maintenance issue or performance challenge in some way?…why pick one or the other?

Thanks for the help.

 

[MrBaku]

Looks like a Constant Current LED driver (1800 mA output Constant Current required).
Wattage will tell you the max amount of LEDs that could be connected.

How many LEDs do you have in your circuit (model & make)?

IMHO: Mean Well drivers are pretty great.

 

[lilscorpion]

Looks like a Constant Current LED driver (1800 mA output Constant Current required).
Wattage will tell you the max amount of LEDs that could be connected.

How many LEDs do you have in your circuit (model & make)?

IMHO: Mean Well drivers are pretty great.

There’s quite a few leds. So I have to have exactly a 1800mA driver at least 72watts, 24v?

 

[MrBaku]

Correct! Seems like it need to be 1800 mA or could be a little lower, like 1500 mA. If you would put higher amps thought the leds, the might not last as long as for what they were designed.

Amperage would stay constant, but the wattage would depend on how much voltage would drop on each LED. Who knows, you might not even need the full 75W. Hard to tell without knowing what leds you have hooked up to that driver.

 

[American Locomotive]

As mentioned, you need to match the current, as that is how LEDs are regulated. However the driver you get must be at least 40v, otherwise it might not generate enough voltage to push through all of the LEDs (we don't know how many LEDs are in series). It can be a higher voltage rating as long as it is a 1800ma/1.8a constant current driver.

 

[MBfreak]

The electronic drivers are mostly garbage.
A much simpler and totally interference free driver is to use a 400 V rated modern plasric capacitor in series with a 1N4407 diode and putting an electrolytic cap over the output. You have to use a plastic capacitor that gives a DC current in the LED chain according to its rating.
In 50Hz 20 V Sweden a 1,0µF400V cap gave the correct drive voltage of 172 V DC for a strip lite "tube" with about 55 series connected LEDs

Ola

 

[cybrdyke]

Since you dont know the exact wattage being used by your lights, you should use anything over 72w. It wont matter if it's an 80w or more. 1800mA is required though. You might check with a local electrical supply house. Many of them are starting to carry tunable drivers that they or you can tune to 1800mA. 80w is a pretty common size.
Good luck,
CD