LED lighting community benefits from ongoing standardization efforts (MAGAZINE)

April 25, 2010
Industry input is providing valuable feedback on the LED lighting standards that have already been put in place in the USA, while further standardization efforts are continuing, writes JIANZHONG JIAO.

With the beginning of a new year and many signs of economic recovery, the LED lighting industry is gaining ground, expanding revenues and working to broaden LED product knowledge and acceptance. The continued market penetration of LED lighting is also providing the industry’s standardization community with valuable, first-hand feedback from users of the technology. This is enabling various organizations to revise existing standards and to continue to develop new standards and to prescribe best practices for developing and using LED lighting products. This article updates progress on standards in the USA since our two-part series published last year (see Links p. 60).

In October 2008, IESNA (the Illuminating Engineering Society of North America) published LM-80, the LED lumen-maintenance testing standard. The purpose of LM-80 is to establish uniform test methods for lumen maintenance of LED light sources including LED packages, arrays and modules. In turn, this allows a comparison of test results from various laboratories. LM-80 lists what data needs to be reported, but it does not specify how the data should be presented, nor does it address the uncertainty of testing equipment and repeatability of testing operations.

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This article was published in the April 2010 issue of LEDs Magazine. To read the full version of this article, please visit our magazine page, where you can download FREE electronic PDF versions of all issues of LEDs Magazine. You can also request a print copy of LEDs Magazine (available by paid subscription) and sign up for our free weekly email newsletter.