LED lighting brings a great leap from short life time gas discharge lamps and 5~7 year warranty already becomes a standard offering for outdoor applications. For some special tenders for street lights or stadium lights, the aggressive 10 year warranty requirement is put on the table to become a great challenge for luminaire designers. Traditional consideration always put LED driver as the shortest brick, however, it should also be fully paid attention to that cable, mechanical components as well as the LED lumen attenuation are being challenged during the long 10 years. This article only tells about the LED driver related design considerations for 10-year warranty light fixtures.
1. The difference among the drivers with different warranties.
| Model | Lifetime | Capacitor | Efficiency | Tc max | Enclosure | Cable |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10 Year Warranty Driver | >100khour | 10k/12khour long life high quality (NCC, Rubicon typically) | Extremely high | 90C | Aluminum | Double insulated |
| 5 Year Warranty Driver | >75khour | 5k/10khour long life high quality (Aishi typically) | High | 85-90C | Aluminum | Double insulated |
| 3 Year Warranty Driver | >30khour | 3k/5khour (unknown) | Mid-low | <85C | Steel | Single core |
Using high quality capacitors and optimizing the drivers to high efficiency to achieve low case temperature, a 10-year warranty driver also need to make sure the enclosure and cables are reliable enough.
2. Key considerations when using a 10-year warranty driver.
a. The life time is strongly related to case temperature as the typical curve shown below.
And a long life design has to guarantee that the case temperature does not exceed the maximum value specified in the datasheets.
b. Ask the driver supplier to provide a warranty letter for the 10-year design where the total failure rate and the failure treatment should be listed.
c. Do everything possible to cool down the driver.
d. Better to fix the driver inside the luminaire.
Generally speaking, by suitable and careful design the 10-year warranty luminaire is feasible and currently those kind of high quality products are more and more welcome in the market. uPowerTek’s 10-year warranty products are also available among the range of 40-1000W power.
