Most efficient way to power multiple power supplies in an enclosure

mammy said:
Notenoughlists, let me see if I understand your concern. I plan on just connecting all 4 PSs to one single line coming into the enclosure via a terminal block. Are you saying this will damage the power supplies?
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Damage of the supplies is not the concern as much as nuisance tripping of the breaker or heating of the outlet and/or outlet wiring. The supply model was not mentioned but a 350 Watt Meanwell would indicate a LRS-350. If correct, when fully loaded, Meanwell's datasheet for these indicate an approximate 6 amp draw. Four of these will put you then at 24 Amp and over the breaker rating.
Another concern is the Inrush Rating of the supplies. The reason why staggered switch on of the supplies was mentioned.
 
I've done a similar thing, all though I used 4 x ip66 rated outdoor 12v power supplies, and then I've bolted them to the outside of my enclosure, I simply then use a 4 port power board to connect all AC power leads into, no problems for 2 years running it like this. I am though considering upgrading the 4 PSU's to a single 1600 watt or bigger supply just to tidy up some clutter in that area and simplify the wiring internally. I can either spend $800 something on a meanwell or buy 3-4 from AliExpress and have spares.
 
I'd get some smart house outlets to just do delayed turn on, some have power monitoring.,, get a power cord with an overload trip on it and you'll not need to worry

if you have unlimited money I believe some of the Rack gear lets you do fancy things with power distro
 
Thanks for the good advice. That's helpful. I'm actually going to start out with 3 Mean Well LRS-350 PSUs to power my 5400 12v pixels (107 pixels per string plus a 270 pixel star) on my tree @ 20%. I'm modeling my tree after Doug Reel's (reelpilot on YouTube, inspirelightshows.com) slick design. He seems to have no problems with just 3 PSUs if he keeps the pixels at 20%.

If I do find that my configuration is underpowered (or I want, for some reason, to increase the percentage) and I need the 4th PSU how do I integrate that 4th PSU into my configuration? With 3 PSUs and 3 boards to power (F16v3 plus 2 expansion boards) it's nice and neat since there's one PSU to power both sides of each of the 3 boards. I plan to use the PSU powering port 48 (the last expansion board) to power inject at the end of the 270 pixel star that will be connected to the end of the last pixel string on the tree (port 48) so I don't have to cut the V+ line to isolate the PSUs.

But how do I integrate one additional PSU to help with the power load when I have 3 boards? How do I balance out the power by adding just one PSU?

Idea #1: I could power inject with the 4th PSU but if I only need to inject about 150 pixels at the end of the 377 pixel string off port 48 that seems to be under utilizing the 4th PSU.

Idea #2: I could get three additions PSUs, not one, to balance the power load and have 2 separate PSUs for each card?

Idea #3: I could use the 4th PSU to power inject the end of each string but injecting the end of 48 strings seems cumbersome.

Thought on this?
 
MichaelF5 said:
if you have unlimited money I believe some of the Rack gear lets you do fancy things with power distro
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Definitely, I used to have some power rails of which all outputs were independently controlled (over serial, although these days are ethernet) - and you could set a delayed startup - so on power application, I had them staggered to boot up the servers at 4 second intervals (thereby taking 80 seconds to switch on the entire rail)
 
Not quite sure I follow your listed ideas; but I am inclined to think either #1 or #3.

If you have not yet thought about it, the Falcon F16V3 can be powered by 2 supplies. Ports 1 to 8 and the board logic on 1 supply and ports 9 to 16 on another. Please note that the V- is connected on the Falcon between the 2 power connectors so if adding a 4th supply insure that supply V- connections do not stress the Falcon's internal V- PCB traces.
 
Skymaster said:
Definitely, I used to have some power rails of which all outputs were independently controlled (over serial, although these days are ethernet) - and you could set a delayed startup - so on power application, I had them staggered to boot up the servers at 4 second intervals (thereby taking 80 seconds to switch on the entire rail)
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my usual tactic is tell the servers to perform random timed power on when power returned, have you configured many of the ethernet ones... are they set and forget... do you need special software or can you say "do this when power returned" and leave them be?
 
MichaelF5 said:
my usual tactic is tell the servers to perform random timed power on when power returned, have you configured many of the ethernet ones... are they set and forget... do you need special software or can you say "do this when power returned" and leave them be?
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Completely missed this until now. The ones I have used are set and forget. You just set the AC-On delay per socket, and whether to auto-on that particular one.
When the power rail receives its AC, it takes maybe 10 seconds to boot up, then it kicks off its auto-start, powering up the sockets in order down the rail (the ones I had this couldn't be changed) and they'd just turn on with the intended delay. click....click.....click down the line. I had two of them daisy chained from the control side, and they could be either sequential (rail 1, rail 2, etc) or in parallel - useful for dual-powered kit, or if you had separate breakers for the power rail that simultaneous boot wasn't an issue.
 
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