LED Quality Assurance - How to determine what is ture (1)

The LED revolution continues to promise many lighting benefits, such as compact size, energy efficiency, long service life with long mean time between failures, no mercury disposal, a resistance to shock and vibration, and no radiated heat or UV output. However, combine high demand for this hot, young technology with rapid product proliferation, continuing emergence of critical standards, and relative lack of industry education and experience, and many installations are failing user expectations.

How can electrical contractors protect themselves and their customers from these risks associated with white LED lighting?

Consider the entire story. The easy path to selecting an LED product is to choose the lowest wattage for the lowest price. That way, the customer can maximize energy savings for the lowest cost. This approach, however, can just as easily lead to poor performance and failed customer expectations.

In lighting design, designers light the space first and then choose equipment that best satisfies the application need. This is a lower risk approach to selecting products because the choice is based on complete project requirements.

Beyond watts, specifiers should account for other basic metrics, such as light output (lumens), resulting efficacy (lumens per watt or LPW), rated life (hours), correlated color temperature (K) and color rendering index rating (CRI). These metrics for LED Flood lights will answer the questions: How much light does it produce? How much light does it produce per watt? How long will it last? What is the color tone—warm, neutral or cool? And how naturally does it render colors and flesh tones in a space?

Even these basic metrics do not tell the whole story of a lighting product. Other attributes include light distribution, glare control, center beam intensity, compatibility with dimmers, ratings for indoor or outdoor use or both, suitability for installation in enclosed spaces or spaces with contact with insulation, the warranty, and others.

Get educated about lighting and LEDs lamps. Translating application needs into LED product selection requires a basic understanding of lighting and specific knowledge about LEDs. The objective is to acquire equivalent or superior performance to conventional sources while gaining the unique advantages of the LED.

For example, LEDs radiate little heat, but the performance is highly sensitive to heat generated inside the LEDs themselves. Some LED lamps may last 100,000 hours as advertised, but by that point, only a fraction of useful light will continue to be emitted. A given retrofit lamp might be touted as equivalent to an incandescent A-lamp but only in certain lighting fixtures where the directional characteristic of the LED improves fixture efficiency.

By understanding all of the lighting metrics applicable to the complete needs of the given application, decision-makers can more easily satisfy those needs by comparing, evaluating and ultimately selecting the right products—while keeping manufacturers honest by seeing through misleading sales claims. Take advantage of manufacturer and independent education. Try a few samples. Get to know the technology.