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Toby Mills
Dec 11, 2018, 7:54:40 PM12/11/18
to Loxone English
Hello
Like many others, I've always thought it was completely mad that in a solar install where we run everything at 24volts, we then use inverters to convert to 110v or 240v then use LED drivers to pull the voltage back down to LED levels again.
Or we use constant voltage LED's with the Loxone LED dimmer which are hard to source, expensive and don't come in the packages we want (especially for retrofit)
I've finally come up with a solution which I've installed in my own house and is working brilliantly so I thought I would share it with the group.
I have a fairly standard solar setup running a battery bank at 24Volts.
I have no AC inverters, I don't use the solar system to run mains power, only to run all the lighting in the house and the loxone system.
The battery bank drives into a solar controller which outputs a clean and consistent 24V which is split up by a series of DC breakers.
I went with these LED's because they have a feature called sunset dimming where the color temperature drops as they are dimmed down, it really makes them look like halogen.
They aren't cheap but they look gorgeous.
In total, there are 74 individual down-lights in the install, each one is independently dimmable and controllable through loxone.
I could have used any constant current LED down-light though, I just chose these because they are beautiful.
The LED lights I went with are rated at 36V to 42V with a constant current of 350mA.
So how to drive them?
The first step is increasing the voltage from 24V to at least 36V.
To do that job, I used a number of these units
To do that job, I used a number of these units
There is some efficiency loss, but it is nowhere near as much as converting from 24 to 240 to 36.
These feed directly into 7 x 12 channel DMX constant current dimmers
These dimmers supply 350mA constant current and are rated up to 36V. I'm not driving the LED's at their maximum output voltage but they are still more than bright enough and it will extend the life of the LED's considerably.
The current limiting on these dimmers can be adjusted by cutting tabs on the circuit board to add or remove resistors. The other option is 700mA but you can add your own resistors to adjust to any specific current limit you want.
Using the loxone DMX tree, I can control every single DMX channel individually which is super flexible. For example I have night time scenes that only turn on specific individual LED's in a room.
This solution is working really well and is simple to install, maintain and expand.
It's also surprisingly cheap, it works out at only US$4.50 per channel for the dimming side of things (excluding the Loxone DMX tree).
Using the loxone DMX tree, I can control every single DMX channel individually which is super flexible. For example I have night time scenes that only turn on specific individual LED's in a room.
This solution is working really well and is simple to install, maintain and expand.
It's also surprisingly cheap, it works out at only US$4.50 per channel for the dimming side of things (excluding the Loxone DMX tree).
When I buy the LED lights, I just throw away the driver that comes with them.
Running the lights on solar has cut around 20% out of my power bill without having a huge capital cost of a large bank of panels and inverters to run our mains power. Its two relatively small panels and two relatively small batteries.
Running the lights on solar has cut around 20% out of my power bill without having a huge capital cost of a large bank of panels and inverters to run our mains power. Its two relatively small panels and two relatively small batteries.
It also means that in the event of a power outage (something that is quite common where we live), our loxone system and all the lighting in the house, keep on running so we aren't in the dark.
I also run our router, wifi and switch off it, so that if the power does go out, we can at least keep using the internet. This has won a LOT of brownie points with the wife.
Its taken an incredible amount of research and testing to get to this point, but I now feel like its a pretty tidy solution. I'm aware though that it goes completely against the grain of what most people do.
I would be interested in any comments or suggestions on it to see if it can be improved, or perhaps I've missed a fatal floor in the implementation, so far though I haven't really found any problems.
Its taken an incredible amount of research and testing to get to this point, but I now feel like its a pretty tidy solution. I'm aware though that it goes completely against the grain of what most people do.
I would be interested in any comments or suggestions on it to see if it can be improved, or perhaps I've missed a fatal floor in the implementation, so far though I haven't really found any problems.
Toby
New Zealand
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