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I'm new here, but I've been checking your forum few times before, never registered. Anyway... I have a problem at my home. I'm not very electrical kind of guy, so these questions may be easy to answer to some with more experience in this field.

I bought a 5730 LED lights from eBay, of consumption stated at 2W per light bulb. I have 19 bulbs installed and are all wired to an adapter. The consumption when first installed was around 42-45W. But now, after two weeks use (may have happened even earlier) the lights are consuming 70W!

What is going on?! How could this be?!

Thanks to anyone who could help me out

OK, I'm not sure what info I have to give, please do understand I'm not good with this stuff. But here is goes in my own words, very amateurish discription:

Led are like this: Base: G4

Led type: 5730 5630

Input: AC 12V

Power: 2W

Color: pure white (6500-7000K)

Lighbulb consists of 15 x 5730 LED

I wired all of them (19) to an adapter (12V, 5.8A). I wired them like this: I took a wire and went from adapters wire + to lighbulb wire +, then to next lightbulb etc. I did the sam procedure with - polarity.

To measure the usage I used a wattmeter, commercial one you put in the socket and then you plug in device switch to show you Watt usage and that's it. When I first pluged it in it showed 40-45W. That's ok. Then when I tested it 2 weeks later 70-75W. That's not OK :( I'm from EU.

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    \$\begingroup\$ Besides that this is not a forum, we have no datasheet for the leds, no idea how you power them and how are things wired (i.e. schematics). My guess is that something has changed. \$\endgroup\$
    – PlasmaHH
    Commented Apr 30, 2015 at 9:19
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    \$\begingroup\$ As mentioned, this is not a forum. However, you haven't even given us anything that we can work with. What are the power requirements (voltage, current, frequency) of your lamps? How did you measure the power previously? In what way has that changed? Is there any chance that your power measurement device has changed? \$\endgroup\$
    – Dwayne Reid
    Commented Apr 30, 2015 at 11:08
  • \$\begingroup\$ Switched between AC and DC measurement modes? \$\endgroup\$
    – Spoon
    Commented Apr 30, 2015 at 11:58
  • \$\begingroup\$ Low quality LEDs run at rated output or higher or much higher in some cases, may die quite rapidly. I have seen LEDs fail short circuit although this is relatively rare. \$\endgroup\$
    – Russell McMahon ♦
    Commented Apr 30, 2015 at 16:26

2 Answers 2

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With the limited information provided, this is a guess, and a suggestion for clarification, but... Where did you get consumption of 2W per lightbulb from? Those are simple LED's, no special drivers or current limiters included in the package.

If you have them in a series string, you need to limit the MAXIMUM forward current for the entire string to 150mA (from the datasheet as absolute max If). You can't do this just with a voltage source, and for a series string, I wouldn't attempt it with a single resistor either, use a current regulator.

If you have them in parallel, you can use a series resistor with each individual LED, based on your supplied voltage, to limit its current.

The wild guess/speculation part is here... I am thinking that without proper current control to the LED's, you are burning them out, and they are failing as short circuits causing more current to flow as the voltage drop across failed ones vanishe.

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if possible please share schematics or diagram of the circuit.

there can be many problem :- 1) check the power circuit. 2) maybe the leds are working in overcurrent or say kind of short circuit. 3) maybe due to heat, the conductivity of LED(semiconductors) increases, so more current is flowing and more power is consumed.

you better try to use some current limiting component in your power supply circuit.

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