sorry southcross i didnt see your post yesterday.
theres a couple things there
most notably the fact that with 36V chips on that driver, dimming via Vo probably does nothing as in all cases the voltage the driver is providing is far above the chips operating voltage. the chips take their share of current from the driver and voltage follows along, about 36V per chip
with the 50V chips, when you reduce Vo you are actually restricing voltage to the chip and pushing it down the voltage/current curve. as far as Io with those drivers, it generally adjusts from about 40% to 110% of driver current. but by using Vo you can dim it below 40% as again youre restricting the voltage with the 50V chips which limits the current the driver would pull.
hard to say exactly where you were operating it with the 36V chips, but with driver turned all the way up on both screws it should be 40% brighter
current is the same, but voltage is 40% higher, so wattage is 40% higher
as for how many chips fit on that driver its essentially unlimited. after reading this
I need to add two more chips to the array. According to the driver specs, 6-7 chips are the best performance and the highest wattage yield on the curve. With wattage dropping off after an 8th chip is added.
Am I on track with the number of chips?
it would help if maybe posted a screenshot of the driver datasheet that got you to that conclusion, so were talking apples to apples
with constant voltage drivers assuming you can fill it with X number of chips and operate them at full power (i.e for the current you are giving the chip you are not capping its voltage), youre using the same amount of driver power by adding more chips.
in other words say the max voltage on your driver was 53.5V and this corresponded to 2.1A for a 50V chip (just making up hypothetical current all chips are a little different)
if the driver is 7.6 A you hook up one cob and that driver is gonna put out 2.1A@ 53.5V
2 cobs: 4.2A @ 53.5V
3 cobs 6.3A @53.5V
4 cobs 7.6A @ maybe 53.3V
5 cobs 7.6A @ maybe 53.1V
6 cobs 7.6A @ maybe 53.0V
so i see what youre saying, as voltage falls you are starting to get less output out of your driver
its not clear whether the 7.6A limit is 100% fixed or if that will bump a little as voltage drops
my 2 cents is the increased efficiency of the cob chips makes up for the driver not operating at its absolute peak output. driver efficiency curves are pretty flat above 50% load
that would be an excellent study though! at some point, the
overall light output (which grows plants) may decrease with heavy stacking on constant voltage drivers, or at best level off to where adding more cobs in fact adds no light at all because the incremental efficacy gain by dropping current per cob is exactly equal to the reduction in array voltage
certainly adding an infinite number of cobs makes the array more effcient per watt, BUT we are looking at overall light output as what grows plants so at some point youre adding cobs for nothing
the efficiency difference between 4 cobs vs 5 cobs and then 5 cobs vs6 cobs is somewhat pronounced
between 35 and 36 its tiny.
so we need to do some more homework to find the sweet spot i guess