If we have chosen to buy LED lamps today, we need to understand that what an LED lamp can do in theory is one thing, and what it actually does is another.
Speaking to a large LightFair audience, Jeff McCullough and Mia Piaget of the Pacific Northwest laboratory told them to learn as much as they can about the LED products they are interested in buying.
Lighting professionals would do well to ask for luminaire test results for every LED product they want to use.
They told their audience that while some LED products work very well and live up to the manufacturers’ specifications, most of the products on the market today do not perform as well as the progress made in this technology would suggest. Most products fail to meet manufacturers’ claims and are no better than the alternatives already available.
Of course, when they are properly designed, LED products are now able to compete with traditional light sources.
Interested professionals, and indeed anyone buying light sources, can study both the summary and the detailed reports on tested LEDs through CALiPER (Commercially Available LED Product Evaluation and Reporting), a programme of the United States Department of Energy.
Five rounds of measurements and testing have been carried out and more than 100 products have been tested, with particular emphasis on the overall performance of the luminaire. The results can be found on the relevant website .
To date, CALiPER has covered a wide range of products, and has produced an equally wide range of results:
– Power from 0.6 W to 189 W
– Output from 10 lm to 6272 lm
– Efficacy from 4 lm/W to 62 lm/W
– Colour temperature from 2600 to more than 7000
– Colour rendering index from less than 50 to 95
What can a consumer learn from looking at the results of these rounds of measurements and testing?
For example, by looking at the results of CALiPER’s round 5 tests for downlights, you can find out the following:
– Manufacturers’ claims compared with the actual performance of the lamps
– Output and efficacy of the downlight with each lamp in place
– Luminous flux and intensity distributions
– Luminaire losses for each lamp (including thermal effects).
Comparisons are made in the following categories:
– Downlights
– Replacement lamps
– Performance of task / desk lamps
– Outdoor applications
For more information, see the CALiPER site.
