Four major issues that need attention in the application of LED street lights

In recent years, the scale of China's semiconductor lighting market has grown rapidly. In particular, the "Reply on the Agreement to Carry out the Pilot Project of "Ten Cities and Ten Thousand Lamps" Semiconductor Lighting Application Project" issued by the Ministry of Science and Technology in April 2009 has pushed the application of LED in the field of road lighting to a new climax. However, while the industry is developing rapidly, some problems are inevitable. Wang Xiaoming, director of the Engineering Construction Department of the Shanghai Street Light Management Center, pointed out that there are too many companies that are keen to apply LED lighting technology to road lighting, whether they are traditional street light companies or non-traditional street light companies, resulting in a series of large and small problems and drawbacks in the development and production of LED street lights. If these problems cannot be well solved, in actual application, LED street lights will encounter more objective resistance and doubts, including those from street light operation and maintenance management units.

In summary, enterprises should focus on the following four major issues in the research, development, production and promotion of LED street lamps:

The first is the appearance and structure of the lamp. The appearance of traditional street lamps, such as sodium lamps, is generally divided into two parts: the light source and the electrical appliance. The specifics may be different for each product, but in general, they are basically the same. However, due to the particularity of LED light sources, the way of light distribution is different. Now the appearance of LED street lamps can be said to be varied. Many of them cannot meet the requirements of operation. Some companies even use indoor standards for outdoor street lamps. In addition, there are also problems with the connection between LED lamps and lamp poles. Almost all LED street lamps are fixed with screws, and few are fixed with clamp bolts. The installation process may be simple, so manufacturers spend little effort on it. However, for operating units, safe production is the foundation, and the connection of lamps is directly related to the safe operation of lamps, so they pay more attention to it.

The second is the weight of the lamp. The weight of the lamp is very important, but most LED manufacturers are not aware of this, or have not given much thought to this aspect. For heat dissipation considerations, the outer shell of LED lamps may be heavier than that of traditional lamps. However, excessive weight will have a certain impact on operation and maintenance.

The third is the replaceability of lamp components. LED street lamp components generally include LED chips, power supplies (drivers) and lamp housings. The vulnerable parts are mainly: power supplies (drivers) and chips. Generally speaking, LED lamp chips cannot be replaced, but power supplies (drivers) can be replaced. However, the replacement of power supplies (drivers) of some products is not convenient enough, or it takes too much time to replace them on site. In addition, the current life of LED lamps is generally 30,000 hours, and the longest is 50,000 hours. If the LED chip cannot be replaced, the entire lamp can only be replaced, resulting in a large waste.

The fourth is the life of the power supply (driver). The power supply (driver) is a very critical component of LED lamps. Because many LED lamp manufacturers do not produce their own power supplies (drivers), sometimes the quality of the LED lamps themselves is good, but they often fall into the problem of the power supply (driver) inadvertently.

In fact, whether it is the quality or life of the LED itself, or the life of the power supply (driver), they are all manifestations of the quality and life of the LED street lamp itself. The quality assurance of LED lamps should include both aspects at the same time, that is, whether the life of the LED street lamp is 30,000 hours or 50,000 hours, it should include the quality and life of the power supply (driver). However, the current situation in the market is that general LED lamp manufacturers only guarantee the quality of LED chips, but the life of the power supply (driver) is another matter. Most manufacturers generally guarantee 2 years, 3 years is relatively rare, and 5 years is even rarer. Therefore, there is a new bottleneck in the development of LED street lamps now-power supply (driver), and its quality assurance restricts the development of LED street lamps. This should attract the attention of manufacturers.