LED Christmas Light question

[Qship1996]

I have a 25 foot Maple tree that I have lit with 2000 traditional mini lights for the last 7 years,and decided to switch to LED this season for the electric use savings and durability reasons. Planning on using 20 sets of 100 count LED strings,which are 34 foot long each,made with 22 awg wiring,and consume 9.6 watts per string according to the tags on each string.

Here is my question,according to the instructions on the tag,I can safely connect up to 210 watts worth of strings end to end{21 strings,which would be 202 watts}.....however,if one connected 21 strings end to end,you end up with 714 feet of 22awg wire,which to me would sound like quite a huge distance to travel without generating massive voltage drop? Am I missing something here?

 

[Arilou]

714 feet of 22 awg would be roughly 13 ohms, so 26 ohms for the pair. At 1.7 amps, that's about 44 volts drop.

 

[Qship1996]

Thought it would be a massive voltage drop.....wonder how that affects the LEDs? And why all the manufacturers of these LED strings promote hooking up so many strings end to end,just does not seem a "best practice" to me? I will most likely connect 5 strings end to end,max knowing this.

 

[Arilou]

The current wouldn't be the same through every string though. Each one would be less than the one before it, so the total voltage drop would only be about half of that. If it's only 22 volts less, the lights might still work.

 

[Qship1996]

So,are you saying it would be OK to hook up 20 strings end to end .....would there be a visual brightness issue or other problems caused by the voltage drop?

 

[Arilou]

There could be a brightness issue. The only way to know for sure is to try it. Why would you want to connect 20 strings end to end when you could use several shorter chains and avoid this problem.