Can you wire up LED's in series ?????

Question

to make a circuit from 5 3v LEDs (and using a 9 volt battery with a resister) i was told to put them in a parallel circuit but they also seem to work in series... what is best...why ... thanks ... Livvy*

Answer 1

yes, but you'll add capacitors parallel to these LEDs

if you put them in series: 5x3 = 15 volts .. it won't match your supply.. you'll have to put capacitors to compensate with the supply..

so just use parallel..

Answer 2

no, it will not work. it must be in parallel and its advantage is that the leds will recieve equall voltage and is one of the leads didnt light, you may tell its busted bcoz the other light up

Answer 3

You can wire LED's in either series or parallel.  It doesn't matter to the LED.  In parallel you need a resistor for each LED to limit the current.  In series you need a resistor for each series set.  This help save power if you're using batteries.  

For example, you have a 12 volt battery.  If you use a parallel circuit you need a 450 ohm resistor for each LED.  This resistor is dissipating 0.18 watts.  If you have 5 LED's with 5 resistors you would have almost 1 watt dissipated in just the resistors.  If you have 2 circuits of 3 LED's in series you would need a 150 ohm resistor for each series set.  Each resistor would dissipate 0.06 watts for a total of 0.12 watts.  You get 6 LED's instead of 5 and save almost 0.8 watts of power.  

For your circuit, with LED's in parallel you would need a 300 ohm resistor for each one.  Each resistor would dissipate 0.12 watts for a total of 0.6 watts.  If you used 2 circuits of 2 LED's in series and 1 circuit of 1 LED, and then connected them in parallel, you would need 2 resistors of 150 ohms for the 2 LED's and 1 resistor of 300 ohms for the single LED.  The total resistor dissipation would be 0.24 watts.  Your 9 volt battery would last over twice as long.  While the 9 volt battery could run 3 of the 3v LED's, the minute the battery voltage dropped below 9 volts the LED's would go out.  By using 2 LED's, the battery voltage can drop quite a ways before the LED's would go out.  You don't want to get to close to the battery voltage.  If you were using a power supply and didn't need to worry about the voltage dropping you could run 3 LED's in series.