LED + SSL

I wrote a feature article about LED drivers for the April issue of ELECTRICAL CONTRACTOR, which I’m happy to share with you here. The article describes the purpose and functionality of LED drivers, constant voltage versus constant current, major trends, and things to know during selection.

A brief article I wrote for tED Magazine. Reprinted with permission. While LED promises long service life as one of its primary advantages, accurately projecting lifetime remains a challenge. The Next Generation Industry Alliance’s (NGIL) LED System Reliability Consortium (LSRC) recently updated a key report, LED Luminaire Lifetime: Recommendations for Testing and Reporting, to shed [...]

Recently read an interesting article about LED lighting in ELECTRICAL CONTRACTOR. Early on, a quote from Kevin Willmorth: “LEDs bring a global rethink,” said Kevin Willmorth, owner of Lumenique LLC, a lighting product development and consultant firm in Germantown, Wis. “They introduce us to a new era of lighting as an appliance. But this new [...]

BizLED recently published an interesting story about a solid-state lighting technology that could become efficient enough to take on the LED: nanowires. I’ve theorized that given LED’s efficiency and performance, it may well be the last major light source for the foreseeable future. There will continue to be a great deal of innovation for many [...]

Magnitude Lighting Converters sent us a link to a page on their website that includes a terrific and lengthy infographic describing how LED lighting works, concluding with detail about the difference between constant current and constant voltage operation. Check it out here.

Yesterday, LightNOW published a guest blog post by Jim Brodrick, DOE’s SSL Program Manager, on a new IEEE recommended practice on LED flicker. As metrics, IEEE uses % flicker, operating frequency and flicker index. A graphic is provided that plots % flicker relative to the light source’s operating frequency. Color shading reveals safe and low-risk [...]

Republication of Postings from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Solid-State Lighting Program by Jim Brodrick, SSL Program Manager, U.S. Department of Energy The emergence of high-frequency electronic ballasts for use with fluorescent lighting did away with most general-illumination flicker concerns back in the 1990s. That is, until the advent of LEDs, which have put [...]

Republication of Postings from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Solid-State Lighting Program by Jim Brodrick, SSL Program Manager, U.S. Department of Energy The efficacy of LED lighting products has already surpassed that of traditional technologies for most applications, but there remains significant headroom for improvement. DOE has set ambitious efficacy targets for SSL, and [...]

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has released its latest report in a series analyzing markets where LEDs compete with traditional lighting sources. The new report, Adoption of Light-Emitting Diodes in Common Lighting Applications, estimates penetration into the installed lighting base in 2014 in 10 popular lighting applications. DOE also estimates 2014 energy savings as [...]