Learn all the factors needed to compute your circuit’s capacity and find out how many LED lights per circuit.
Are you renovating your house and planning on installing new LED lights? Or maybe you simply want to switch to LED lights due to its many benefits over its counterparts? Are you planning on doing it yourself but have little to no knowledge on how many LED lights per circuit you can safely install?
If you’re looking for answers, then you have come to the right place. Our guide can provide you with the answers you’re looking for. This short guide will enable you to install your new lights without compromising the safety of your home by overloading your circuit.
Switching to LED Lights
LED lights are the newest type of bulb known to produce brighter light while being 90% more energy-efficient than its predecessors. They also produce less heat which contributes to their longer durability and lifespan.
Considering this, switching to LED lighting for your home can be more beneficial for you. Examples of its advantages include:
- Reduced amount on your electric bill
- More environment-friendly than its predecessors
- Less heat, making it more durable
- Takes a long time before needing replacement
Switching to LED lighting for your home will not only help you save on your electric bill but also enable you to do your part in saving the environment.
However, before you replace all the bulbs in your bedroom and the rest of your home with LED lights, you will first need to know how many LED lights per circuit you can install without overloading it.
What You Need to Know
- Voltage (Volts) – you should know your power supply’s voltage not only because it is important in computing your circuit’s capacity but also because the voltage of your bulb and that of your power supply need to match. If they don’t, your bulb will end up being damaged.
- Amperage (Amps) – the amperage, or more commonly known as current, is the amount of electricity that is flowing through your lights. It is vital to know how much amperage your bulb can handle because if you overload it, it will also end up being damaged.
- Wattage (Watts) – wattage refers to the amount of electricity consumed to produce a certain amount of light. Hence, if your bulb has a higher wattage, the brighter the light it will produce.
Computing Your Circuit’s Capacity
Computing the capacity of your circuit is simple. The formula is volts x amps = watts.
Most homes in the US have a standard voltage of 120V with standard circuits usually rated 15 or 20 amps. Therefore, using the formula, we can compute that a standard 15A-circuit can handle 1800W while a 20A-circuit can handle 2400W.
However, a general rule of thumb is to only use 80% of your circuit’s overall load capacity, so a 15A-circuit should only handle 1440W and a 20A-circuit should only handle 1920W.
How Many LED Lights Per Circuit?
Now that we know how much wattage standard circuits can handle, we can now compute how many LED lights we can safely install per circuit.
The formula for this is wattage of your circuit / wattage of your bulb.
Therefore, if you have a 10W bulb and a 15A circuit, you can install 180 LED light bulbs per 15A circuit. However, since you should only use 80% of your circuit’s capacity, you can only safely install 144 LED bulbs per 15A circuit.
This means a single 15A circuit can probably power all the LED lights in your home. Although it can do so, it’s not advisable because it will make troubleshooting harder once your circuit breaker trips.
We recommend that you limit the number of LED lights per circuit to a number with which you won’t be confused in case you need to troubleshoot.
Final Thoughts
Switching to LED lights is easy and will be beneficial for you and your home. However, knowing how many LED lights your circuit can handle is crucial to ensuring your safety and convenience.
Considering the three factors, you can now figure out how many LED bulbs your circuit can handle. Remember that you should only use 80% of its wattage and that you shouldn’t install the maximum number of bulbs it can handle.
With all this information, installing, maintaining, and troubleshooting your new LED lights will be easy and convenient.