The title kind of sums up my question. I just installed a DCC decoder into a previously DC engine. However, due to some kitbashing, it has no lights on it. The question is, since I'm not powering any lights with the decoder, is the power drain less than it would normally be? Thanks in advance.
Yes...but only in the magnitude of 20-30 mAs. At any event, not much of a drain on your DCC system.
Tom
https://tstage9.wixsite.com/nyc-modeling
Time...It marches on...without ever turning around to see if anyone is even keeping in step.
Yes, lights do add to the required power, so having no lights will give you less drain on the system.
Realistically, though, the current required for small lamps is pretty miniscule. A typical grain of wheat bulb draws about 30-40 milliamps, so you would need 25 of them to get up to 1 amp. A LED, commonly used for locomotive lighting because of their small size and low heat dissipation, will use on the order of 10 milliamps. This is a tiny fraction of the 250-500 milliamps required for the motor, so it's really down in the noise when doing power computations.
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That makes sense. Thank you, both of you, for responding.