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Thread: need help with dimmer and halogen or LED potlights

  1. #1
    Junior Member
    Join Date
    Jul 2022
    Posts
    2

    need help with dimmer and halogen or LED potlights

    Hi, we just moved into a new house and I'm trying to solve a problem with my halogen potlights in my home theater room.

    There are 15 potlights with 12v 50w halogen bulbs in them.
    I wanted to have the ability to dim them, ideally with app control, for home theater integration.
    We had a Lutron dimmer/hub left over from a previous renovation, and I asked our electrician to install it.

    It works but the lights will flash a few times before finally coming on.

    I suspect that's because the lights need more power than the switch supplies as they are coming on. (If i have the caseta hub plugged in then the lights flash a bit longer before finally coming on... I think the switch needs more power to talk to the hub and that makes the problem worse.)

    In any case I want to solve this.

    Unfortunately I dont know the model of the Lutron dimmer. It looks like a PD-6WCL or PD-5NE or PD-10NXD.
    (It's really surprising for me that there is no way to get the model number of a connected device from inside the app.)
    Is there any way for me to understand which model I have without pulling it out of the wall?

    Anyway I expect i need to change either the dimmer or the bulbs

    I know that LED lamps are much more efficient, but I know that they dont work well with dimmers and they are expensive, so I'm afraid to buy a bunch of LED bulbs and find that they also dont work.

    I thought maybe high-efficiency halogens are a better route?

    I would just like to get some advice on a reliable solution to avoid trial and error...

    thank you for your help.

  2. #2
    Junior Member
    Join Date
    Jul 2022
    Posts
    2
    would love to get some advice on this! please help!

  3. #3
    Lutron Technical Support
    Join Date
    Mar 2022
    Posts
    120
    Good day. It does sound like the dimmer is being overloaded, or you are using the wrong dimmer. The PD-6WCL is not rated for low voltage and it can only handle 600W of 120V halogen lights. The PD-10NXD is the dimmer you need since it is rated for up to 1000W of low voltage halogen lights. You can see which model you have by removing the wallplate and looking at the ratings of the dimmer that are stamped into the bottom part of the metal yoke. If you see a 600W inc/hal and 150W led/cfl rating, that would be the PD-6WCL. If you see a 1000W inc/hal rating and a 250W led/cfl rating, that would be the PD-10NXD. The PD-5NE is easy to tell because it has the programmable favorite button on the front unlike the others. Hope this helps!

  4. #4
    For the lamp load your talking about (15 X 50), you definitely will at least require the PD-10NXD, 1000 Watt dimmer. If there's any way of breaking the loads up, (front, middle, back) then you could get away with using PD-5NE dimmer, and have individual flexible control.

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