Challenges faced by smart LED lighting designers

The government has strengthened the management and control of consumers and the needs of consumers, making modern lighting designers face increasing challenges. Energy Star and the European Commission and other agencies are concerned not only with the energy efficiency of electronic devices (including lighting), but also their standby power consumption, as this may be an important source of energy consumption for a long time. Under the smart lighting scheme, this challenge has become even tricky. Because the power supply must remain "on" to search for signals from the controller, it is constantly drawing current. Currently, the Energy Star regulations allow a standby power consumption of 0.5W, but agencies such as the California Energy Commission (CEC) plan to reduce this figure to 0.2W by 2019, which will further upgrade the challenge.

As lighting shifts from incandescent to LED technology, dimming has also changed. More complex pulse width modulation (PWM) technology is gradually replacing simple resistive or TRIAC-based dimming, which requires designers to adopt different methods.

LEDs are a low-voltage technology, which means that they cannot be driven directly from the mains like an incandescent lamp, but instead require a power supply that provides a constant voltage (CV) or constant current (CC) supply depending on the LED application. The power supply has a substantial impact on the overall performance and energy efficiency of the lighting solution, so at least it needs to be subject to rigorous review as the LED itself.

There are many different lighting solutions on the market today, ranging from a few watts to hundreds of watts. Therefore, the design of its driving power is also varied. At lower power levels (usually less than 10W), a single-stage conversion topology is the most popular solution.

As the use of multi-functional solid-state lighting becomes more and more extensive, the space occupied by LEDs and their associated power supplies is also being squeezed smaller and smaller, which means that efficiency is crucial, which can reduce the generation of waste heat. Lowest, and able to reliably install and run lighting solutions in a small, usually confined space.

One of the important reasons for the rapid development of LED lighting solutions is the price drop of LED itself. Therefore, installers and consumers not only hope that LED power supply can achieve better performance in a smaller space, but also expect to see a similar price reduction (which means that designers need to reduce the number of components and reduce the overall BoM cost). .

LED lighting is increasingly popular for its low power consumption, versatility, and intrinsic compatibility with smart lighting solutions. As a result, designers are increasingly demanding performance, especially for low standby power. And provide a wide range of dimming capabilities.