Current LED spot lights are mainly used to replace traditional halogen lamps. Among LED lighting products, LED spot lighting technology has a relatively long developing history. A series of comprehensive standards all referred to the traditional lighting requirements and also be in accordance with the properties of LED lamps. At present, the two major authorized Certification of LED spot lamps are CE Certification from Europe and UL Certification from America.
CE Certification includes two parts: LVD(EN60968) and EMC(EN55015, EN61547, EN61000-3-2 and EN61000-3-3). Besides LED lights usually need to satisfy IEC 62471 standard and conducted photobiological tests. In north America, UL Certification and FCC electromagnetic compatibility Certification are necessary.
In addition, LED spot lighting technology have many standards in performances. America has ENERGY STAR requirements and China has energy-saving requirements. These standards had strict limitations on color temperature, CRI, initial luminous flux, lighting efficiency, central light intensity, standard working power, power factor and so on.
The service life of many electrical appliances was judged by “broken time”. LED is an advanced lighting source that may work for a long time without any failure. But its light intensity will be receded with time. We named this phenomenon as “light attenuation”. Normally, in LED lighting industry, technicians will define the service life of LED as the working period until light attenuate to 50% of the original light intensity. With the development of LED technology, light attenuation has been dramatically slowed down. However, giving out a specific time of LEDs’ service life is infeasible. Currently, scientists can only estimate this value by a set of tests. Basically, this process begin with a series of short-term aging tests, taking average value of light attenuation, then estimate the general time of light attenuating to 50% through exponential functions.
Usually, take measurement of Lumen Maintains (LM) after a 6000-hour aging test. In accordance with the exponential law, if LM>91.8% after the 6000-hour aging test, then the estimated service life of tested LED will be 25,000 hours. If LM>94.1%, then the estimated service life will reach up to 35,000 hours. The estimated time should no more than 6 times of the aging test time. Therefore, 36,000 hours will be the maximum estimated service life for a 6000-hour aging test. If you obtain a final LM result larger than 95%. That means you have to extend your aging test’s time.