Our Guide to LED Drivers

A question that our team is often asked is whether or not a light fitting requires a LED Driver. This guide aims to help answer this question.

Understanding Current and Voltage

Before we get to drivers, let's start with understanding a couple of key electrical terms. Firsty there is Current, which is the flow of electricity moving through a circuit and is measured in Amps. Secondly there is Voltage which is the amount of pressure (from the power source) that pushes this charged electrical current through the circuit and is measured in Volts.

An analogy that is often used is water in a hose pipe, the Current is the same as the flow of water through the hose, while Voltage would be the same as the pressure of the water moving through the hose.

In Australia most buildings run on a 240 Volts AC (Alternating Current) mains current. All appliances (such as light fittings and associated light sources) are designed to run at 240v by standard.

Modern LED light bulbs are also mostly designed to work at 240v and for the majority of light fittings your electrician simply needs to wire them up to a circuit, pop in a bulb and everything should work perfectly.

Low Voltage Fittings

There are some circumstances where lights are specifically designed or required to run on a lower voltage (generally 12v or 24v). This is where an LED Driver comes in. The LED driver is the middle-man who takes in the 240v AC mains current and safely reduces it down to the low voltage DC (Direct Current) required.

LED Drivers can either come integrated (where the driver is in-built within the light fitting) or as a separate component. Lights that are commonly low voltage and come with an integrated/in-built driver include bathroom lights, downlights and linear pendants. Lights that commonly require separate drivers include step lights, garden lighting, landscape Lighting, festoon lights and some smaller exterior wall lights. Some Lighting Collective ranges are specifically designed to be low voltage to enable better all-weather compatibility.

Understanding Wattage

Before we get into how to select the right driver for your situation, there's one more electrical term to introduce. Wattage is the quantity of electrical power required to power an electrical appliance and is measured in Watts. The higher the wattage of an appliance, the greater the amount of electrical energy it uses over a period of time. In terms of lighting, this generally relates to the Wattage of the LED's and/or globes that provides illumination for a fitting.

For light fittings that require a separate globe, we always ecommend selecting an appropriate LED globe which are much more energy efficient and longer lasting than traditional alternatives.

How to Select the Right Driver

How many lights will be on the same switch/run?

The most important question when calculating what driver you require is how many lights will be on the same switch/run. Your calculation needs to take into account that:-

• LED Drivers should only be run between a minimum load of 20% and a max load of 80% of their wattage capacity.
• There can be up to a 30% draw to start up a circuit, especially for garden lighting (due to the often longer runs) so extra wattage capacity is often good in these circumstances.
• As a general rule of thumb you should only run a maximum of 25m of low voltage cable from each driver.

At Lighting Collective we generally recommend calculating the total wattage of all the lights on the switch/run, doubling that figure and then selecting the next driver up from what is available.

For example, if you need x6 1.5W step lights it would be advisable to go for a 20-watt driver (1.5 x 6 watts = 9 watts, double this is18 watts, 20-watt will most likely be the next driver increment up).

Overall it is always better to go with a higher driver capacity, you can then always add on more lights as/if you need to!  

What type of driver is best suited?

This will be stated on our product specification. For example, if the specifications say "12v Fittings Must Be Used With Suitable 12v DC LED Driver", you then know that you need to have a 12V DC driver with sufficient wattage to safely run the number of fittings you plan to put on one switch.

Is dimming required?

A compatible LED driver is always required to run low voltage fittings on a dimming system, so its important to ensure that the fitting, light source and driver are all compatible with the dimming system you are looking to use. Commonly used dimming systems include;-

• Triac = Basic traditional dimming that works with a rotator switch on the wall.
• 0-10v Dimming = Computer controllable dimming.
• Dali = Controllable via a digital interface.

Are the fittings for external usage?

LED Drivers are available with different levels of IP rating, with a higher weatherproof IP rating needed for any external usage (e.g. IP66 drivers for garden usage).