All right it has already gone outta hand here, let's start clearing up a bit
ALL boards and drivers WATT ratings are DC, NOT the watt you draw from the wall (AC)
You ALWAYS pull MORE power from the wall than you put into your boards!
Picture: The driver takes a cut to translate AC to DC.
@Amy Gardner What boards are you using ?
I think you might have nominal and max mixed up, 1,2 ampere max seems like a very low max....
Actually, I'm 99,99% sure you've got them mixed up -> 640 diodes running at less than 200w , I run my 352 diode lamps at 200w and my QB288 V1 at 135w.
I believe what PGR said is the power supply isn’t 100% efficient, so if your wall meter says 175w your boards may be only getting 150w or so. But I’m high and could’ve read it wrong.
You're right
It's not that big a difference though, when using HLG drivers we rarely dip below 90% driver efficiency.
With the driver on full it pulls 186 from the wall according to the meter. It’s tempting to think this is already accounting for the 94% efficiency - because the max out put if the driver is 200 and 186 is about 94% of that (93% ish, actually). But then I’d be making the mistake of conflating draw from the wall with driver output again - and I’m almost back where I started.
This is a great example of why it's so hard to calculate these things on paper
My guess of 167w was based on LOWER voltage than the boards max rating going to the boards, but it's the other way around here, your boards get a HIGHER voltage than the max rating.
Since I've already arrogantly established that 48V and 1,2A are the nominal ratings, it makes a little sense to me that the voltage is higher than 48V, now I'm thinking your boards are more likely ~54V and maybe as much as 3,0A max
So that means my driver doesn’t pull its full 200watts from the wall. On full it’s pulling 186, so PGR’s estimate that I’m getting about 166W to the boards is about right.
That was just my guesstimate of the actual wattage based on the max ratings and how lower current usually means you get lower voltage than max, but if the max rating really is the nominal rating the equation becomes false
If you pull 186w from the wall, the boards get: 186w AC * 0,94% driver efficiency =
174,84w DC
175w DC / 5 boards =
35w DC per board
35w DC / 0,7A =
50V per board
Now we've established that you can put a max of 50V and 0,7A (or 35w DC) into each board with the driver you have.
35w DC * 1,06 =
37,1w AC per board (37,1w * 5 boards = 185,5w)
To calulate percentages we need the actual V and A max ratings on your boards