Your patio is one of the great places to put low voltage lighting, and a 12v transformer is a good power source for it. You don’t have to use 12v of course, but it is a very common voltage and will do the job just fine. Since patio lights are often more for atmosphere than for really bright light, It makes sense to use low voltage lighting and save a bit on your electrical bill.
To put something like this together, you need to know what you want in terms of lighting. Are you looking for a few well-placed light fixtures or are we talking massive arrays of high-power LED’s? Your answer to that will dictate what sort of 12v transformer you have to get, so be sure to plan your lighting scheme well. When you know approximately what sort of light-source you want – usually either halogen bulbs or LED arrays – then you should 
determine the total power consumption with your lighting solution. In either case, this information should be available to you on the package of the bulbs or LED’s, where a rating in watts should be clearly visible. Halogen bulbs are commonly 35-50 watts – perhaps less – while LED’s are in the range of 1-3 watts (although there will be more of them in the end,which brings the power usage up some). Take the number you find and multiply it with the number of bulbs you want to have, and you now have a number which represents the needed power in watts. This is what the lighting transformer must deliver, minimum.
When you go looking for 12v transformers, remember that what you get could be called either a 12v ac transformer or a 12v dc transformer (this one is actually a power supply, which means it is a transformer plus some other parts) depending on the requirements of your light-source. Again, that information should be readily available to you. That is basically what you need to know to power your patio lights. Have fun, and remember that mains voltage is lethal!
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