The main function of LED drives is current-restriction in many conditions to keep LED lights chips from current surges and other operation faults. Most LED drives can guarantee a certain level of safety to effectively prevent electrical fires and mechanical friction fires. In the field of LED area lighting, outdoor temperature will bright greatest challenges to LED drives. Some drives even have to work under high voltages, such like 277VAC, 347VAC, 480VAC.
LED drives used in area lighting should satisfy a certain level of power factor (PF) or standards of harmonic contents. Such like IEC61000-3-2 standard issued by IEC has clearly restricted the harmonic contents of lighting equipments (C type) that have power consumptions larger than 25W. In fact, based on general IEC standard, many countries have their own certifications. A LED lamp with a PF of 0.9 can completely meet the requirements of IEC61000 standard but still incompetent in America’s lighting market. In order to protect domestic LED industry, the American standard for high-power LED lighting products (larger than 25W) has an additional requirement: THD must be lower than 20%.
Most LED are lighting applications were used outdoors, which will suffer all kinds of serious environments. It requires LED products with longer working life. It is said that the entire system design has significant influence on service life of LED components. Using LED drives that generate less heat, consume less power and have higher efficiency is rather important. Besides, the improvement of cooling sections and protection circuits is also a key point to increase the reliability of the entire system.
LED lighting applications can be intellectualized. Generally, traditional LED street lighting realized intelligent control through timing devices or other light intensity sensors. While LED area lighting have more accurate intelligent control based on power line communication (PLC) or wireless control technology, such like the concentrated control based on time output and light output; brightness level control based on vehicle density sensors; Through intelligent controls, LED lamps can be turned on and turned off or self-adjust brightness level depending on the nearby conditions. Provide full lumen output when activities or objects are detected, while only provide only 20%-40% lumen output in the dormancy state.