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LED Luminaires Standards Overview

by Tom Littrell, ETC Fixture Product Manager

Introduction
Is there a new lighting control console in your future? Will you be buying or The following standards are appearing more frequently in specifications for LED lighting equipment. Energy Star LM-79 LM-80 TM-21 This document is intended to explain each standard and present the current state of ETC LED products as they relate to each standard. The terms LED, Solid State Lighting and SSL are used interchangeably in this document to refer to lighting fixtures that use LEDs as the light source.

Energy Star
Energy Star is a United States government program created by the US Environmental Protection Agency in 1992. The ENERGY STAR version 1.3 criteria cover the requirements for SSL products used for general illumination, including those with significant decorative function. The criteria apply to residential and commercial products. Products carrying the Energy Star label must provide a three year warranty. E  ntertainment lighting products are specifically identified as products that are outside the scope of the standard. S  elador Classic, Desire and Source Four LED products will not meet Energy Star requirements in their present form due to their power consumption in the off state (power applied but lights are off). Energy Star is written for low-wattage LED sources and specifies that individually addressable fixtures with external control and intelligence shall not exceed 0.5 watts when in the off state. ETC LED luminaires typically consume ~10 watts in the off state. This power consumption is required to keep the control board running in order to receive and process DMX/ RDM commands.  It is important to note that it is highly unlikely that any existing higher wattage LED device with DMX/RDM control will meet this requirement. All ETC fixture products are covered by a two-year warranty.

Copyright 2012 ETC, Inc.

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LED Luminaires Standards Overview

White Paper LM-79, LM-80 and TM-21 Overview

LM-79, LM-80 and TM-21 are standards created by the Illuminating Engineering Society of North America (IESNA). These standards apply specifically to LED lighting. I t is important to note that these are not performance standards per se, as in: An LED fixture must output XX lumens to meet this requirement. These standards specify testing and reporting procedures so that products from different manufacturers can be evaluated using equivalent data. L  M80 and TM-21 specify standards for reporting lumen maintenance (see below). LM-80 specifies testing up to 6000 hours. TM-21 recommends a method for projecting the results of the LM-80 tests beyond 6000 hours to arrive at reasonable estimate of LED life. What is Lumen Maintenance?  LED emitters typically do not burn out or die in the practical life of any LED product; they fade in intensity. So the concept of lamp life has been replaced by the concept of lumen maintenance.  Lumen maintenance is generally a prediction of the number of hours an emitter will operate before it fades below a usable level of intensity. Currently, most lumen maintenance reporting assumes that dropping below 70% intensity is the end of life for an LED emitter.  LED lumen maintenance is typically reported as a total number of hours with a B number and an L number. ETC rates its LED fixtures with a lumen maintenance value of 50,000hr (B50, L70). This is a very common rating in the LED fixture industry. This indicates that after 50,000 hours of use, 50% of the LEDs tested (B50) will fall below 70% of their initial lumen output (L50).  These metrics indicate the probability that a single LED will fail lumen maintenance under precise test conditions, not necessarily a system of LEDs, or the drivers and power supplies used in a luminaire. LM-79 Approved Method: Photometric Measurements of Solid State Lighting Products This standard describes very strict procedures for testing and reporting reproducible photometric and electrical measurements of solid-state lighting (SSL) products for designed for illumination. Photometric measurements include: luminous flux and intensity efficacy o correlated color temperature, color rendering index other Electrical measurements include: input AC power input voltage frequency power factor other

Copyright 2009 ETC, Inc.

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LED Luminaires Standards Overview

White Paper
As currently written, this standard is designed to measure the total light output of general illumination fixtures and provides little or no information on how light is distributed within a specific beam or field angle. Consequently, this method is not suitable for measuring light output from a theatrical fixture. F  or the reasons stated above, ETC does not publish photometry based on LM-79 E  TC publishes photometry data for all lighting fixtures, including LED-based fixtures, based on American National Standards Institute (ANSI) standard E1.9 - 2007. ANSI E1.9-2007 specifies photometry reporting for theatrical lighting fixtures, especially field distribution and data for 50% beam angle and 10% field as required by stage lighting practitioners. E  TC uses industry-standard testing equipment and procedures and publishes accurate photometry data. I t is our understanding that the authors of LM-79 agree that the methodology specified by ANSI E1.9-2007 and used by ETC is valid and appropriate for stage lighting, and are considering a revision to the standard. These standards are revised on a 5-year basis; seeing the ANSI standard okayed officially will take a while. E  TC publishes accurate electrical information for our fixtures but we do not currently use the testing procedures called out in LM-79. LM-80 Approved Method: Measuring Lumen Maintenance of LED Light Sources LM-80 is a testing standard for the manufacturers of LED emitters, not for the manufacturers of lighting fixtures. LM-80 specifies test conditions and methods of measurement of lumen maintenance of LED sources - specifically the LED package, array or module driven by auxiliary driver. The test consists of a minimum of 6,000 hours with data collected every 1,000 hours. The standard does not specify pass/fail criteria, how to extrapolate the 6,000 hour data collected or L70 prediction methods. Since it requires tight control of test conditions at the LED, it can be a time consuming and expensive test to perform. E  TC uses Lumileds emitters in all LED lighting fixtures. Lumileds can provide LM-80 reports on their white and royal blue LED emitters. They do not perform full LM-80 testing on their color LEDs. E  TC uses the Lumileds guidelines for powering and cooling our LED arrays. We believe that the 50,000 hour lumen maintenance specification is a fair representation of LED performance in our fixtures. TM-21 Projecting Long Term Lumen Maintenance of LED Light Sources TM-21 recommends a method for forecasting the lumen maintenance of LED light sources beyond the 6000 hours of data obtained by LM-80 testing. This is the method to be used to derive the number of hours before the L70 (70% of initial lumens) standard of lumen maintenance is reached.

Copyright 2009 ETC, Inc.

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LED Luminaires Standards Overview