Financially beneficial to downgrade 12v transformers?

My guess John, and yes it's wild, is that it's okay to continue the bigger fella. However, you should measure its voltage under load. Depending upon its internal resistances, etc, its sec voltage might be slightly higher than you suppose, reducing the life of the bulbs

Thanks. I will do that. Not too worried about lifespan as way I look at LED bulbs is that their lifespan is pretty much irrelevant.

For instance even though the bulb might be rated for 50k hours or 20 years, I have already upgraded them twice within the past 3 years. The first ones were terrible and only produced about 100 lumens each, The new ones are super bright at 250 lumens each and use only 4 watts of power.

My guess is that way before these die off I will end up replacing them for whatever is the next evolution of LED. Who knows what that will be in a few years with COB LED's, OLED's and other types hitting the market.

thanks again for that tip.

Don't bother swapping the transformer. The wattage rating of a transformer is merely the maximum amount of power that the transformer is designed to deliver safely without overheating.

Sometimes a misunderstanding about current/power pops up: just because because a transformer can deliver 240 Watts it doesn't mean that it will . It's the load which determines how much current will flow and thus how puch power is drawn.

If you connect lamps totalling 40 Watts consumption to a transformer rated at 240 Watts, those lamps [the load] will only draw 40 Watts, thus the transformer will be only delivering 1/6 of its rated power, and will run nice and cool.

If you are using LEDS designed to work from halogen 12V AC transformers they are designed for a fairly wide voltage range say 10 to 17 volts and will cope fine with mains fluctuations and any increase in tranformer output voltage with a light load - such as an LED. Manufacturers have an annoying habit of specifying 12V dead, which is pretty silly.

I've also found that to be the case. Thaks to Tes for



Remarkable creature Tes

Thanks!