14.4 volts to lights when charging?

RV daytrader wrote:
when you are charging your batteries and charger is putting out 14.4 volts in boost mode, is that voltage going to harm led lights??

depends.

If the LED lights have regulators AND have a wide operating voltage range typical of regulated LED's then no. Mine have regulators and are spec'd for something like 10V-18V operating range. camp close to 90 days/year, for 3 years and they are working fine.

However, regulated ones (a) cost more and (b) unless they are designed well, can emit RFI and cause noise in TV, radio etc. I found ones that don't cause RFI problems in my use. Only way to know is to buy one and try it. Even from the same mfg, one type may have no noticeable RFI and another bulb type may.

Now contrary to popular belief, LED' lights do get hot. They are on the order of 10-15% efficient, so guess where the the "other" 90% of the power goes... Into HEAT. and the power is related to voltage SQUARED. So going from 12V to 14.5 is a noticeable increase in power. So it takes a good design and heat sinking to have LED's last reliably over wide voltage range.

NOW to my original attempt at LED's with some cheap non regulated LED's the answer is. Highly likely to damage them. I had some that literally had the LED's get hot enough to melt the solder and had LED's raining down onto the table top. And others that after a few weeks use with the converter cycling starting becoming dimmmer and dimmer and dimmer. And all of these had the adhesive on the back of the panel turn black and shrivel up and the panels drop down.

That was 3 years ago, and as a retired EE, I know that I could design a non regulated LED panel that would last, be relatively constant brightness and not get to hot while operating between 10V and 15V DC. So there may be some out that that do this, just probably not the cheapest ones on ebay etc.

however, it would be easier and quicker to design a system using a good regulator.

back to the old "get what you pay for".