Reefledlights
I hear you. And I hope you didn't take my comment as being negative. I believe the collective experience gained by the masses has done wonders for this hobby as well.
I don't mean to knock you hear at all. But something you should understand, especially since you sell this technology to the public, is that playing around with electrical circuitry is not the same as spilling coffee on yourself. If you forget to check the lid on your cup and end up taking a bath in your double mocha cappuccino then shame on you. But at least in a situation like that then you're the only one who gets burned.
I believe this hearkens back to my comment that builds should be evaluated on a case by case basis and not generalized as a one size fits all. In you're case you are running 12 drivers. Half of which are linear and the other half are non linear smp's. So you can't quite compare your fixture to the same thing as running 12 ELN's because it isn't the same. There are oodles of information on the differences between the two floating around on the web. A simple glance on wikipedia can give you a general idea about those differences. And a little googling on the relationship between non linear switch mode power supplies can yield you some further information about the high harmonic frequencies that they produce and why EMI and RF filters should be used. I think the biggest problem and what no body really seems to be clear about is when and at what point does it become an issue to be concerned with. Not just or so much about the idea it might burn your house down. But what do those frequencies do when they interact with other electrical devices?
I am a little curious to know exactly what you spoke to the folks at Meanwell about and what questions were asked. Did they provide you with some type of actual numbers or guidelines to stick with or did they just say throw as many drivers as you want on there, it's just fine? And did you speak with a rep. or did you actually speak with an electrical engineer who designs these power supplies? I wonder because I'm curious that if harmonics is nothing to be concerned with then why are they building drivers like the HLG which are better suited for larger builds with built in active power factor correction to minimize such frequencies? I would think that if there was nothing to be concerned about then why go through the extra trouble?
Harmonics and inrush current aside lets look at things from a practical stand point. I like to celebrate the holidays and put lights up around the house. I have not yet burned the house down because of this. But that doesn't mean that other folks haven't. I'm at least half way smart enough to understand that there are limits to everything. And pushing those limits increases the potential for bad things to happen.
You have your drivers hooked up to an EB8 that has a built in 15amp fuse. So you can't pull more than 15 amps through your controller before the fuse pops. That's smart, and a good way to go. But not everybody thinks about those things. But it doesn't neccssarily do anything to protect the rest of the circuit either. Some folks have 15 amp circuits in their house and some have 20 amp circuits. Any self respecting electrician will tell you that you should never run a combined total of devices that will draw more than 80% of your circuits capacity. Why? Safety! Electrical fires happen from pushing the limits. And not everybodies household circuitry is as safe as the next guys. So a safe limit would considered as 12 amps on a 15 amp circuit and 16 amps on a 20 amp circuit. Anything more then that is already considered over loading the circuit.
Lets look at the ELN's. For all intensive purposes we'll go by what the specs say and that is that they pull 1.3 amps when in operation. Even though some guys are drawing around 1.5 amps with them. We'll say 1.3a. 10 drivers would be pulling 13 amps, already overloading the 15 amp circuit, may or may not burn the house down. Probably not but I hope you're not an unlucky person. 12 drivers pulling 15.6 amps. Close to the limit on a 20 amp circuit but not quite over. But what about the folks trying to run these fixtures on the same circuit that they have all of their other aquarium equipment on? It's only gonna take 1 heater to put yourself in the so called risk zone.
So my point is simply to help create awareness. I'm not gonna say that you should do this or shouldn't do that. I'm just going to say what I would or wouldn't do. And I personally would never run more than 10 of those drivers, even on it's own dedicated circuit. But that's just me. Everyone else makes the choice for themselves. I just think they should try and educate themselves in this area as much as possible before taking on builds like these. More so since it isn't just our reef inhabitants to worry about, but it's us and our families.
