I see that you now recommend a third party product for dimming incandescent/halogen etc lamps.
The Finder unit (15.11) looks well made but it has an internal power supply that draws 1W even when the load is switched off.
My upcoming house design require approx 4o dimmable circuits - is there any way to avoid a standing loss of ~40W ?
Hi
Welcome to the community.
There’s nothing stopping you powering these dimmers from a relay controlled feed (grouped as you wish)
Which is what I have in my own home to stop the Zombie effect.
There’s a follow action in Velbuslink you can use between the dimmer channel and a relay.
(Many to one)
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I’ll take a look - the relay will need to turn off when all dimmers powered by it have been turned off (maybe with a small delay).
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My first thought would be to add a relay, but is really that 40W that much if you install dimmers for 16kW in total? My tv sat box takes 30W (which is a shame) in the standby-ready-for-fast-switching-on mode.
P.S. @MDAR What’s the zombie effect?
Yes, that’s also possible.
There are so many “actions” you can use.
https://cdn.velleman.eu/downloads/velbus/00_general/guide_velbus_actions_descriptions_en.html
I heard the phrase, referring to hardware that is “off” but still drawing a little bit of power.
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The 40 dimmer loads are mostly low wattage, some using modern LEDs and few older halogen loads. Probably around 2kW in total, and mostly turned off. I’d estimate less than 1kWHr per day for the load.
So it makes no sense to have around the same consumption on stand by ( 24hrs * 0.04kW = 0.96kWHr)
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You convinced me. And relays are so cheap that it makes sense to cut off the dimmers…
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Is the Finder slave dimmer really 1W on standby? That seems a bit high. Are we sure they didn’t just round up something fractional to 1? Has anyone measured it?
The old VMBDMI-R take 30ma in standby. Which from 18V is still over half a watt but they waste much of that as heat because of the power supply regulation. I would have hoped the Finder module was bit more efficient.
Update: OK, I tried to measure it but that was a mistake… it obviously has a big snubber circuit across the load because I measured 200ma which is obviously not right (it’s a capacitive load because of the snubber so current is out of phase with voltage… would need a proper power meter and I don’t have one handy that I can easily connect).
However, the copy of the Finder datasheet that I have for 15.11 says only 0.5W
That still seems a lot but I think I would not worry about 20W.
10x VMB4DC is another 300ma total which is extra 5W at 18V.
My house seems to idle at 500W anyway (fire alarm, security cameras, server, NAS, two PCs, things on standby… AND all the Velbus etc).
You know, I have wondered about the sense of effectively having a loft-full of snubbers in all those dimmers… my power factor when the house is just ticking over looks pretty crazy. At first I thought I had the phases jumbled up (our house is on 3-phase).
I don’t start to see close to PF 1.0 until I power-up something big. I guess modern electrics are all going that way though… no simple resistive loads any more :-/
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I’ve just double checked and you are correct. I will need to balance the complexity/cost of adding a relay to a group of 4 dimmers against the zombie load of having them live all of the time.
The other consideration would be device lifetime: constant heating from being connected 24x7 vs inrush current causing longevity issues.
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If bought with a Velbus order and installed with the correct ventilation around them, Finder has agreed to honour a similar warranty to the Velbus hardware.
But they will be looking for any reason not to.
So ventilation is essential (basically, install them with a nice gap between them, see the documentation)