A little electrical help

[Sacohen]

I want to run a single Cat5e cable from my Meanwell LDD driver to my lights to control the lighting.

The distance would be about 5-6 feet from driver to lights.

These are the lights.
Aquarium LED Light 144W Full Spectrum 48 x 3W Reefblok Coral Reef Grow Fixture | eBay
There are 2 channels that will be outputting 0-48v (depending on what the controller has them at).

Each channel has only 24 lights on it.

Can Cat 5e handle that voltage and current?

[jimsflies]

PoE uses 57 V DC. According to this 5e is good up to 125V:
http://web.archive.org/web/200606250...y_utp__ftp.pdf

[Sacohen]

Thanks.

I'm concerned about Amps too.

I think the LED's are pulling 1.5 amps per channel, unless I figured it wrong.
144w for the whole fixture (according to the listing) 144/48=3amp for the whole fixture.
Channels are split evenly at 24 LED's per channel so it should be 1.5 Amps per channel.

[jimsflies]

Is this a signal wire or is it actually driving the fixture? I typically see cat5 used to send the (typically milliamp) signal to the driver to control the level of dimming...but not actually powering the fixture. I'm pretty sure you won't be able to use cat5 to power the fixture.

[Sacohen]

I'm going to use it for the signal wires, but I also wanted to use it to send the actual power to the fixture so I only have 1 wire running to the fixtures, from the drivers.

[jimsflies]

cat5 won't work to safely supply power to the fixture.

[Up2no6ood]

cat5 won't work to safely supply power to the fixture.

Agreed. I would use cat5 For the signal and the appropriate wire for the supply and wire loom them together to give that clean look.

[Sacohen]

Agreed. I would use cat5 For the signal and the appropriate wire for the supply and wire loom them together to give that clean look.

Thank you for your help.

[dlhirst]

Another important thing to remember - Watts can be rated as Watts IN or Watts OUT. Most likely, the lights will be rated as Watts OUT - as that is "work" that is being delivered to the corals. However, if you are counting on Ohm's Law for your math, you need to use Watts IN. That will be a higher number. Possibly much higher, too. Check with the manufacturer of that fixture. I don't know how efficient LEDs are, but it could be a meaningful difference.

[skuttduck]

If you aren't using all pairs of the cat5, you could double up the wires to carry more current. It looks like Cat 5 is about 24 gauge which can handle about 2 amps.

I personally would run thicker power wire verses cat 5.