trying to make sure i understand the voltage/current curve
i want to run (at first) 8 3590s per driver in parallel which comes out to 16.7A/8=2.0875A ea. (~75W ea)
here's output from cree's design tool for CD bin
you can see at that current the forward voltage is just a hair over 36V (~36.09V) so i guess my question is how is that driver going to behave, im trying to figure out which region of the CV/CC curve im operating in (from driver datasheet pg 4 -
http://www.cdiweb.com/datasheets/meanwell/HLG-600H-SPEC.pdf )
. seems like the maximum driver voltage in the B model is limited to 36V, which i take to mean i cant run any of the cobs over ~2.04A. The 'A' model can do it but i kind of wanted the external pot/pwm dimming
lets say at an extreme i tried to run 6 instead of 8: 16.7A/6= 2.78 A = 37.2 Vf. would it provide the COB only 36V? and the COB would only pull 2.04A at that voltage?
the opposite example (10 COBs at 1.67A each) is 35.3V and would be more clearly in the vertical constant current portion of the curve since Vf < Vo.
i guess in summary i cant wrap my head around how you would ever be in the constant current portion of the curve. say you hooked up one or two COBs to it, would it behave as above (feed it 36V and the cob would only draw 2.04A) - or would you risk runaway current draw and burn out the cob?
ultimately in the future i want to do 12-20 COBs per driver at lower voltage/current for better efficiency (playing the waiting game on COB prices falling)
would i be better off using the 42V version? i really dont have much of a desire to run much over 2.1A (eff. goes way down and i become heatsink limited). also would limit me to 14.3 vs 16.7A since im 'wasting' that voltage headroom. Also seems like an opportunity to blow up some cobs if a parallel string falls out.... where the 36V model would appear to hard limit within the acceptable voltage range of the COB.