Power Injection Explained

What Is Power Injection or Power Balancing?

Power injection or balancing is the process of adding additional power to your pixel lights to prevent voltage drop.

As electricity travels down a string of pixels, voltage decreases. When it drops too low, you’ll see:

  • Dim or fading lights
  • Incorrect colors (especially white turning yellow/red)
  • Flickering or unstable pixels

Power injection fixes this by supplying power at additional points along your pixel run. I generally try to design my show to eliminate/minimize power injection or balancing, but sometimes you can’t avoid it. It may take a little experimentation with your particular setup to figure out if/when to inject power.

Power Injection vs. Power Balancing: They both achieve more or less the same thing, but power balancing is a little easier to do:

  • Power injection: Use when doing long straight runs on pixels like along the eves of your house — you would inject power every so often into the line using separate wire that runs parallel to the pixels plus injection tees, depending on needs
  • Power Balancing: Use on high density props with lots of pixels where you are getting dimming toward the middle or end of the strings — just use a “tee” connector to connect power to both ends of the light strand from the end of the cable coming from your controller — so you are providing power from each end of the string of lights, which is why they call it balancing

Why Voltage Drop Happens

Pixel lights (especially RGB) draw power continuously.

The longer the wire:

  • The more resistance
  • The more voltage drops

This is especially noticeable with:

  • Long runs (50–100+ pixels)
  • 5V systems (more sensitive than 12V)

When Do You Need Power Injection Or Balancing?

General rule of thumb if you run pixels at full white and 100% brightness (which is generally WAY TOO bright) — I usually default mine to 30% brightness, which looks better and gets longer runs with no injection; look at the power draw in milliamps (ma) or watts (w) when buying pixels — lower means they draw less power, meaning you can run more without injection/balancing

  • 5V pixels: ~12ma/0.06w per pixel; inject every 50–100 pixels at 100% (I don’t use 5V pixels primarily for this reason – I use all 12V)
  • Traditional 12V “resistor” 12 mm pixels: use ~60ma per pixel / 0.72w ; inject every 100–150 pixels at 100%, but possibly more depending on wire thickness (try to buy pixels with 18 AWG wire if possible) — I normally get >300 at 30% brightness
  • 12V “Gumdrop” or “Ez-Push” 12mm pixels: ~11ma / 0.13w; These use less power per pixel, so can generally handle longer runs with no injection — I can run over 500 with no injection; also much easier to push into coro and lighter for storage
  • 12 V Seed Pixels: ~9ma/0.11w; I run strands of 480 of these power balanced on my MegaTree at 30% brightness; even though they draw less power, the thinner wire on most seed pixels makes them susceptible to needing injection/balancing on long runs (thicker wire versions are becoming more common)

It depends on:

  • Wire thickness
  • Pixel type
  • Brightness level
  • System voltage

What You Need for Traditional Power Injection

Typical components:

  • Power supply
  • Wire (usually 18 AWG or similar)
  • T-connectors or injection tees
  • Fuses (VERY important for safety)

How to Do Traditional Power Injection

  1. Run your main pixel line from the controller
  2. Identify where voltage drop begins
  3. Run power from your power supply to that point
  4. Connect:
    • Positive (+) to positive — Fuse goes on positive line
    • Negative (–) to negative
  5. DO NOT connect data line again

Alternate method if you have unused ports on your controller

  1. Run your main pixel line from the controller
  2. Identify where voltage drop begins
  3. Run a long xConnect (or whatever cable type you are using) from an unused output on the controller to a power injection tee
  4. This avoids needing fuses and connecting directly to the power supply (controller outputs are already fused)
  5. The disadvantage is it uses up one of your controller ports

Common Mistakes to Avoid

  • ❌ Injecting power without a common ground
  • ❌ Connecting multiple power supplies incorrectly
  • ❌ Skipping fuses
  • ❌ Running too much current through thin wire

5V vs 12V and Injection

  • 5V: more frequent injection, better efficiency
  • 12V: fewer injections, easier for beginners

Pro Tip

It’s better to:

  • Plan injection early or design you show to avoid it entirely, if possible
  • Spend a little more on higher quality, lower power pixels that minimize need for power injection
  • Overestimate power needs

Fixing it later is much harder

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