I Have 6 Lights On A Piece Of Equipment With Halogen Bulbs On 12 Volt System. How Many Amps To Run The Lights
Posted in Headlight Bulbs | Asked on Aug 19, 2010
The halogen bulb are 55 watts each with a total of 330 watts. What size switch (20 amps ?) and would there a heat issue with 10 guage hot wire and 16 guage ground. Thanks
There are One Answer for "I Have 6 Lights On A Piece Of Equipment With Halogen Bulbs On 12 Volt System. How Many Amps To Run The Lights"
330W / 12V = 27.5A
If you plan on running all 6 lights on one main wire (going to the lights), you will need a 10ga minimum for the power. I’m assuming that your going to ground each light individually to its mounting location, so a 16ga per light would be adequate.
For your switch, just use any switch you want, and use the switch to trigger a relay. In fact, you will be running a 30A relay pretty close to its maximum.
If it were me, I would split the load (3 & 3), run a 14ga or 12ga to each set of 3 lights, and have 2 separate relays (1 for each 3 lights), and both relays would be triggered by your toggle switch.
This way your less likely to weld the contacts on your relay, and also gives you the ability to modify your installation in the future if you wish to not power all 6 lights for some reason.
28A worth of lights is a big load on a vehicle’s electrical system (even more if these are going to be used along with your factory lighting system). Extended idleing will cause a battery drain on most vehicles if all the lights are left on .