LEDs are appropriate for many lighting applications, they are designed to produce a lot of light from a small form factor while maintaining fantastic efficiency.

Here at LEDSupply there are a variety of LEDs for all kinds of different lighting applications, the trick is knowing how to use them.

LED technology is a tad different than other lighting that most people are familiar with.

What Exactly is an LED?

An LED is a type of diode that turns electrical energy into light.

For those that don’t know, a diode is an electrical component that only works in one direction.

Basically an LED is an electrical component that emits light when electricity flows through in one direction, from the Anode (positive side) to the Cathode (negative side).

LEDs are known for having the best efficacy out of all other light sources.

Efficacy is the measure of how well a light source produces visible light, also described as Lumens per Watt.

In other words, how much light are we getting for our watt of power. To find this, first find out the wattage of the LED in use.

In order to find watts you need to multiply Forward Voltage (the voltage at which current starts to flow in the normal conducting direction) by drive current in Amps .

Heat Control

Finding wattage of your sytsem also helps you know more about the heat control you will need.

Since these LEDs are high-power, they do create heat which can be very bad .

Too much heat will make the LEDs produce less light as well as cut down on the lifetime.

We always recommend using a heatsink and like to say to use about 3 square inches for every watt of LEDs.

For larger wattages I would recommend looking for a heatsink that is recommended for the amount of watts you are running.