Andrew_Taylor
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« on: July 17, 2011, 06:01:16 AM » |
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I am using speaker wire and when I attach only one christmas light the light blows due to the amount of power. My theory is to add a lot of lights a long a piece of speaker wire to take up more power so the lights do not get as much power each and do not blow.
Will this work?
I am using the lights to hook into my subwoofer to light up whenever bass is played out of the subwoofer to the beat of the music. they are recieving 12 volts of power from the amplifier.
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Dylan_B
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« Reply #1 on: July 17, 2011, 06:52:32 AM » |
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Yes, adding more bulbs means that less power is dissipated by each bulb. This should reduce the risk of the bulbs blowing, so long as excessive power is actually the problem.
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billrussell42
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« Reply #2 on: July 17, 2011, 05:22:26 PM » |
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First, you should not use speaker wire to run mains voltages, 120 or 240 volts. And the amount of power taken by the wires is small, or should be. If it's not, then you are overloading the wire and have a real safety problem and chance of a fire.
And how are you adding lights? To what are you adding them.
But I can say that more light means more power.
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mbq
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« Reply #3 on: July 18, 2011, 03:34:04 AM » |
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No Andrew you will add risk of over-heating the wire due to consumed power.
In electrical calculations, each element (say light lamp) takes the amount of energy it needs from the source (measured in Watt). If you add more lights they will demand more energy from the source causing increase of the current (electricity) coming from the source to the lights.
In other words, if you demand more Watts you will burn the wire by over-heating and may cause main breaker (the switch at the electric panel) to trip (disconnect). Worst of all you may cause fire also!
I couldn't advice you for a certain design, but roughly if you use electrical cable (not speaker cables because they have very soft copper inside which is not suitable for lights) with 4mm section (wire size) you could connect 100 Watt of lights if you use 110Volts electricity.
Accordingly, to add more lights to your party tree, select lamps with smaller values of Watt (written on the lamp's box, say 5Watts each) and add them together but they shall not exceed the number I gave you above.
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biire2u
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« Reply #4 on: July 18, 2011, 08:35:49 AM » |
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The most important thing is to make sure your bulbs are rated for 120V. The actual power (amperage) isn't what blows the bulbs, it is overvoltage. If you look at your car for example, you have a 12V system but the battery might be 600 amps and that doesn't blow any of the interior lights or headlamps out because of too much power. But if you hooked up two batteries in series to get 24V, then more likely the bulbs will burn out from the high voltage
A Christmas string of lights has very small bulbs but they plug directly to a 120V line with no transformer or anything to reduce voltage. They don't burn out from the 120V or the 20A circuit. Even if there is 100 bulbs in the string and 50 of them burn out, the other 50 are still fine. The bulbs are wired in parallel so they each get the same voltage regardless of how many bulbs burn out. If you wire them in series, the first bulb will get the most voltage and then it will be reduced to each bulb after that.
If your bulb burned out it wasn't from too much power, it was from too much voltage. You probably used a bulb not designed for 120V. You can do your same task much easier by just buying a christmas string of lights, where the wire is about speaker wire in thickness, and the bulbs are made to handle 120V. But in your plan to put in more lights to absorb power, is probably not going to work because each bulb takes very little amperage to run, and you would need thousands of bulbs to use up the capacity of amps in the line and then you run the risk of melting the wire.
But like I said, your problem is probably more in matching voltages instead of to much power. Make sure what ever load device you have, that it is designed for the voltage you are applying. If you put in a bulb from a car that runs at 12V and plug it into house voltage of 120V, you will instantly burn out the light. Likewise if you put in a christmas bulb into a car the bulb won't even light up because the 12V from the car isn't enough voltage to light it up since it requires 120V
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Filby
Newbie
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« Reply #5 on: July 18, 2011, 08:53:18 AM » |
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I think the other answerers have misunderstood the question.
My undrstanding is that the power form the amplifier is being used to light a christmas light bulb and the bulb blows even though there is only 12v across it.
If the bulbs are designed to operate in a series string across mains input the voltage they are designed for much less than 12v. 40 bulbs across 110 v only have 2.2v across each one. Calculate the voltage your bulbs are designed for. If it is 2.2v take six in a series string and connect it across the 12v speaker wire. Don't put 6 bulbs individually across the speaker wire - they will all blow (probably) or at least will take all the power from the subwoofer (and maybe overload your amplifier!)
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