LED strip lighting - how many Kw per hour?

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alisam

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#324312 26-Mar-2026 19:26

Last year, we had a new kitchen fitted and an LED strip light was installed above the Hob and kitchen bench.

I was told it costs virtually nothing to run the lights, but I would like to know a bit more.

As you can see, there are ports for 5 strip lights and I only use 1 of the ports.

Heaters are easy as they usually state the Kw (e.g. 2Kw), but what about the strip lighting?

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RunningMan

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#3474158 26-Mar-2026 19:40

No such thing as kW per hour. kW is the power, kWh is the energy it uses with time.

That aside, the photo you posted above says it's rated from 0-30W. How much the strip draws will depend on the length, number of LEDs and brightness, but the max from that is 30W.

bebek

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#3474161 26-Mar-2026 20:00

It is a power adapter, just like one used for laptop.

First PRI data is your input power i.e. how much power your adapter will draw from mains AC source. NZ use 230V

Second PRI data is only for North America countries who use 110V

The SEC number is how much power output it supply to your lights.

It will draw 230V X 0.2A = 46 Watt AC power maximum to produce from zero up to 30 W DC power

CMIIW

aj6828

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#3474184 26-Mar-2026 22:12

1kW is equal to 1000watts, also one electricity unit to make it easy lets say a unit costs 0.35 cents nzd for 1000w of energy per hour so for one watt of power 0.35/1000 thats 0.00035 cents per 1w of power per hour

by looking at your power adaptor, it can supply 0-30watts ...ok lets say its consuming 30w to make it easy so 30 watts x 0.00035 cents = 0.0105cents per hour to run those lights per hour ..

if your heater says 2kW, it's 2000 watts, meaning it consumes 2 units per hour. Also, heaters they turn on and off so its really hard to calculate without plugging a watt-hour meter ..

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pdh

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#3474198 27-Mar-2026 03:12

I suggest you borrow or buy a small power measuring device and test your actual usage.

Aside from aj6828 getting his dollars & cents mixed up (I pay ~ 0.25 dollars - not cents - per kWh), most of what is said above is true but not particularly helpful.

The performance data on the LED driver is giving its maximum safe output - 30W - and (especially given that you are only running 1 of 6 possible strings) it's pretty unlikely to be maxed out - or even breathing heavily.

On the other hand, as well as giving you that useful power for the LEDs - it's also generating some waste heat in what are called 'conversion losses'.
So, useful output + waste will both need to be considered - your power bill is paying for it all.

According to what's printed on the side, the max it can consume is 0.20A at 247 V or about 50W.

So all we can really say is it won't be more than that - but it's probably 4 - 8W.
You can't really know more without some test instruments - or a cheap power tester.

At 4W consumption, you run the lights for 250 hours to spend 25 cents - so about 10 hours per penny.

At 8W, you only get 5 hours for a penny

In the worst case (and the white driver box is so hot you can't hold it) - the max 50W costs you just over a penny an hour.

If I had to bet - I'd say you're up for about 5 cents a week.

Goosey

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#3474257 27-Mar-2026 08:20

For your purposes, a rough calculation should be

30w per hour switched on, so 0.03Kw per hour?

translated into cost, I think at really high rate of billing at $0.40c per kilowatt hour, you get a conservative $0.02c per hour cost?

or is my math completely wrong?

johno1234

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#3474263 27-Mar-2026 09:00

The actual power is likely to be much lower than the rated power of the power supply.
Plug it into an energy measuring smart plug to find out. Our street sign is backlit by approx 1m of RGB strip which is set by automation to run from dusk to dawn. The monitor says that’s using roughly 0.6KWh a month so about 30 cents a month.
Our patio has a string of festoon lights around it, I think 50 lights over about 30m. Also on a smart plug and runs at 13w according to the plug. Unscheduled at the moment so either switched on by request or motion sensor but say 4h a day times 30 days works out about 1.5KWh or about 70c a month.
TLDR: too inexpensive to worry about unless your house is absolutely covered in them.

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MikeAqua

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#3474287 27-Mar-2026 10:46

It says 0.2A @220v input. Accordsing to ym basic understanding, Watts = Volts*Amps.

On that basis, it draws 44 W (0.044 kW), So .... if you run it for an hour it will draw 0.044 kWh.

Happy to be corrected if I have it wrong.

Mike

timmmay

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#3474350 27-Mar-2026 11:29

All we have is a photo of the power supply, which tells us the maximum capacity, not how much power is being used by the LEDs. LED strips vary in power consumption. In summary though LED strips use so little power they a generally not worth worrying about, unless maybe they're super bright, there's many of them, and they're on 24 hours a day. Kitchen LED lighting is probably on the low side of the scale.

LED power supplyies often fail before the lights. I've replaced my bathroom LED strip power supply once, LED's working fine.

MikeAqua

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#3474423 27-Mar-2026 14:17

timmmay:

All we have is a photo of the power supply, which tells us the maximum capacity, not how much power is being used by the LEDs. LED strips vary in power consumption. In summary though LED strips use so little power they a generally not worth worrying about, unless maybe they're super bright, there's many of them, and they're on 24 hours a day. Kitchen LED lighting is probably on the low side of the scale.

LED power supplyies often fail before the lights. I've replaced my bathroom LED strip power supply once, LED's working fine.

Good point. I think (hope) we can safely assume it's using no more than its rated capacity.

Mike