Power Supplies
If you see a sign and it is partly lite and partly out, that is likely a power supply dying. If the sign is flickering on and off – bad power supply.
How Long Do Power Supplies Last? Well, it depends. There are a lot of manufacturers, prices and designs. At Signs for San Diego, we use brand name power supplies, and they cost a little more. We have found cheaper imported power supplies fail more often and faster. Heat and how much they are used matters. Power supplies run cooler in winter and shorter in the summer. At Signs for San Diego, we see more burn outs in the summer even though a power supply may be running twice as long during the longer nights of winter.
Multiple Power Supplies
When there are multiple power supplies, we often change all of them out with new power supplies when one goes out. There is an average life, where half go out before that average life and the other half after. But when it comes to the service calls, the cost for the labor to go out, find the power supply and change it is between 10 and 20 times the cost of the power supply itself. When the first one goes out, do you want to bet on the life of the others?
How Long do Power Supplies Last?
So, How Long do Power Supplies Last? Well, I don’t know about any specific power supply, but the reason we stopped using the cheapy imported power supplies is they tend to go out in a weeks and a couple of months, we call this infant mortality. Some of these fails quickly, then not at all for several years. We get calls at about the 5-year mark. So, I would say about 5 years.
Power supply placement. If you know you will be paying for a service call 5 years from now, having the power supply “inside” the building will help. Power supplies can be inside the sign or inside the building. If there is a choice, choose inside the building. The access is better, the temperature variations are less, the moister is also lower. You will get a longer life and an easier replacement.
Flickering – Get a Suitable Replacement ASAP?
Power supplies in two ways, the normal way is the stop working, and that is better. The other way is you can see the lights flicker, while turning LEDs on and off quickly does not hurt the LED, higher and changing voltage does kill the LEDs. If the voltage regulation is short, the power supply will fail “soon”, but if the voltage goes high, the bad power supply can damage the LEDs and that increase the wear and damages the LEDS. LEDs are harder to replace and more expense to replace.
Do you have part of your sign out. Is your sign flickering? Signs for San Diego can help. Give us a call or send us a picture. We can fix it for you!!
Need electrical sign repair or even a non-electrical sign repair? We do that. To schedule maintenance or sign repair please call us at 760-730-5118
