Is there a need for a ground wire between driver and light frame when remote mounting?

I bought this extension cord (https://www.alibaba.com/product-det...a2756.order-detail-ta-ta-b.0.0.71842fc28iwXEt) so that I could remove the meanwell driver of my 240w Kingbrite and mount it outside the tent to lower temperatures. Is there a need for a ground wire between the driver and light frame if I remove it from the heatsink?

There should be bonding/continuity to common ground for the PCB's, heatsink/frame, and enclosure/case of the driver, so any stray charges have a path to ground.

With a multimeter you can check continuity by placing one probe on the ground pin of the plug and touching a conductive surface on each of those parts.

Anything that could be energized should be bonded to common ground.

Good luck! Peace

it is may be a bit confusing in the case of our meanwell drivers.
but meanwell does use a isolation transofrmer betwenn in and out.
the voltage on he DC out side wont flow back over the common ground anyway, electricity flows just over the coresponding + and - of the DC out.
they put a lot effort in keeping both seperated as good they can (for safety), grounding the dc out side like the AC in side is counterproductive.
IF the manufactorer want you to do that, he would had foreseen a connector for it.
simply follow the manual and you will be good ,if in doubt ask meanwell directly.

cobshopgrow said:

it is may be a bit confusing in the case of our meanwell drivers.
but meanwell does use a isolation transofrmer betwenn in and out.
the voltage on he DC out side wont flow back over the common ground anyway, electricity flows just over the coresponding + and - of the DC out.
they put a lot effort in keeping both seperated as good they can (for safety), grounding the dc out side like the AC in side is counterproductive.
IF the manufactorer want you to do that, he would had foreseen a connector for it.
simply follow the manual and you will be good ,if in doubt ask meanwell directly.

Click to expand...

I was unaware of this, and I have not seen the schematic. If this is true, then please disregard my post.

np, it really causes lots of confusions, and the thought of grounding everything is basically not wrong.

here is a link showing how primary and secondray sides are isolated.
if you use a common ground for AC and DC there would be no reason for meanwell to put efforts in to seperating the GND on the PCB when they would tell the user to connect it afterwards anyay.
it practically dont cause harm, but its technically not the best solution considered how the drivers work.

oh, of course in case of a non isolated led driver, ground it all, but there is no menawell out there which is non isolated.

for anyone looking for a deeper explanation regarding isolation transformers.

"the point to grasp here is that there is no electrical connection between the input and the output. The link is done by magnetism. This means that the output is “isolated” from the input and hence the term isolation transformer!

In the diagram above, taking an installation without an isolation transformer, the device has an earth fault (for example a live conductor has shorted to the chassis). Since Neutral and Earth are bonded in the consumer unit the system sees this as a short circuit and so a large current will flow which will blow the fuse or trip a circuit breaker. It would also trip an RCD if fitted.

When an isolation transformer is put in circuit, nothing will happen. This is because the secondary live and neutral are no longer live and neutral. They really should be called phase 1 and phase 2 hence I’ve put them in quotes. Since they are no longer live and neutral there is no reference to the incoming earth, and therefore no fault current can flow...."

there is no real problem connecting earth to the chassis, but it wont help much as no current would flow over it anyway when using a isolating transformer.

while it could be problematic if your negative dc output phase gets connected to earth by accident, last of the 3 cases below.
when you connect your chassis to ground the chances this will happen are way higher, some scratches in the paint and pcb plus a screw and you have it.
if you connect earth to your chassis and all is good, you dont have connected your DC output negative wire to GND by accident then we would have case 2 below, basically no problem just no benefit (no current over a unreferenced earth = like no earth anyway) but we have the increased risk of a unwanted NE rebond.
Case 1 would be like using a non isolated led driver.




there would be really a GND port or 3 wires on the output side if meanwell would see some sense in it.
when simply connecting like meanwell suggest, no extra chassis earth, you have basically case 2 without the risk of becomming case 3.