NEMA white paper discusses dimming of LED lamps

Feb. 27, 2010
The LSD 49-2010 white paper discusses best practices for dimming of solid-state lighting for incandescent replacement.
NEMA, the US-based “National Electrical Manufacturers Association” has published LSD 49-2010, a white paper entitled “Solid State Lighting for Incandescent Replacement—Best Practices for Dimming.” It can be downloaded at no cost from the NEMA website.

This new white paper, produced by NEMA’s Solid State Lighting Section, provides recommendations for the dimming and design of screw-based incandescent replacement solid-state lighting (SSL) products.

The main objective of the paper is to encourage coordination among control, power supply, and LED module manufacturers to achieve desired performance and product harmonization throughout the market. The section has also begun work on a related NEMA standard.

Because of the shared concern for high levels of performance and SSL consumer market acceptance, representatives from the US Department of Energy are actively participating in NEMA’s working group devoted to this subject.

“In making these recommendations, our goal is to improve performance and to increase consumer satisfaction of SSL retrofit products in the large installed base of Edison sockets,” said Robert Hick of Leviton Manufacturing, and chair of the section. “Achieving these goals will further market acceptance of SSL products and encourage demand for new SSL product designs. Both interchangeability and harmonization tend to increase market acceptance while decreasing costs, benefiting manufacturers and consumers.”

Other white papers in the NEMA LSD series cover a range of lighting topics such as ballast disconnects, occupancy sensors, and photoluminescent exit signage.