limit the voltage drop

Posted By: Seth Dabney, 2023-C, Oxford, MS
Date: 3/6/10 7:06a.m.

Report: outside forum guidelines

In Response To: Led lighting follow up (link) (George E. Norkus - Santana 2023A - SE Michigan)

Generally, a bare LED will drop somewhere between 1.8 and 3 volts, depending on the color, at its rated current of something like 20 ma. If you string several in series to equal 12 volts, it uses no more power than to run just one in series with a current limiting resistor. Some packages, like the ones I used on my navigation lights, take care of all this internally and are just replacements for the festoon bulbs in the nav lights housing. Those have worked great. I recently chartered with family on Beneteau 36 in Belize for a week. What a beautiful place! I was amazed how much heat the cabin lights put out. In a hot climate, that heat is unwelcome and LEDs would have been welcome, but you would need some pretty bright ones to do the same job inside the cabin.