With the gradual popularization of LED lighting products, for product safety, reliability and energy-saving environmental protection performance considerations, LED lighting products exported to Europe and the United States need to pass the corresponding testing and certification, which is conducive to improving the quality of lighting products in the market, while helping consumers quickly and accurately identify safe and energy-saving lighting products. The difference between testing and certification of general electronic and electrical products is that semiconductor lighting products need to pay special attention to their optical performance and lumen maintenance characteristics in addition to the safety performance and electromagnetic compatibility performance of the product. Therefore, Xingyuan first analyzes the current export of LED lighting products to the EU and the United States need to do what testing certification, and what problems need to be paid attention to in these testing links. Finally, it focuses on the current US Energy STAR certification, which has the greatest influence on LED lamp testing and certification, and shares some testing research experience of Xingyuan Laboratory.
 

1. Testing and Certification of the EU market

 

LED lamps exported to EU countries must pass CE certification, which requires products to pass the requirements of the LVD and EMC directives. LED lighting products EU CE certification LVD directive 2006/95/EEC, the main test standards are EN 60598-1, EN 60598-2 series, EN 61347-1, EN 61347-2-13, EN 62031 and EN 62471.

 

Among them, EN 60598-1 is a general safety standard for lamps, and for specific categories of lamps, it is generally necessary to combine the special requirements of EN 60598-1 and EN 60598-2 series on specific categories of lamps to consider the safety characteristics of lamps. EN 61347-1 is a general safety requirement for lamp controllers, while EN 61347-2-13 is a safety requirement for LED drivers. EN 62031 is a safety specification for general lighting LED modules, which specifies the marking, terminals, protective grounding, protection against electric shock, insulation resistance after tidal state, electrical strength, fault state, structure, creepage distance and electrical clearance, heat resistance, fire and electrical marking resistance, corrosion protection, etc. EN 62471 is a standard for evaluating the photobiological safety of lamps and luminaire systems, which includes LED light sources, but does not include lasers, which divides continuous radiation lamps into four categories according to the degree of optical radiation hazard: exempt class, Class 1 hazard (low hazard), class 2 hazard (medium hazard) and class 3 hazard (high hazard).

 

The main test items in the lamp type test are: mark, structure, external line and internal line, protective grounding, anti-shock protection, dust, water and moisture resistance, insulation resistance and electrical strength, contact current, creepage distance and electrical gap, durability and thermal test, ball pressure, hot wire and needle flame test. In a large number of testing processes in Xingyuan Laboratory, it is found that the test items with a high probability of non-conformance generally include creepage distance and electrical clearance, ground resistance test, ball pressure, hot wire and needle flame test, and IP test.

 

The EMC directive for CE certification of LED lighting products is 2004/108/EC. The applicable test standards are EN 55015 and EN 61547, where EN 55015 considers the requirements of product emission (i.e. EMI), while EN 61547 considers the requirements of anti-interference capability (i.e. EMS). If the product is powered by AC or can be connected to AC power, the EN 61000-3-2 (current harmonics) and EN 61000-3-3 (voltage flicker) tests need to be added.

 

For the requirements of the emission part of lighting products, the EN 55015 standard has three test items: disturbance voltage test, radiation electromagnetic disturbance in the range of 9kHz~30MHz and radiation electromagnetic disturbance in the range of 30MHz~300MHz. In particular, it should be noted that compared with general products, the test of electric field radiation only needs to be tested to 300MHz, rather than to 1GHz. At the same time, the two test items of the test and the disturbance voltage test are usually the test items that the lighting products are easy to fail. Manufacturers need to take special consideration when doing certification or mapping tests.

 

The immunity test consists of seven test items: electrostatic discharge, radiation immunity, fast transient pulse group, lightning strike, surge, conducted immunity, power frequency magnetic field and voltage drop/voltage interruption. Different from the general product requirements is the lightning strike, surge this test item, the test level specified in EN 61547 will be related to product power, less than or equal to 25W product test level will be lower than greater than 25W products, and the general product test is unrelated to power. At the same time, lightning strike, surge this test project is also a relatively harsh test in all EMS projects, many lighting products are difficult to pass the test. If the product does not pass this test, it is generally able to pass the test by adding a varistor on the circuit.

 

In addition to the LVD directive and EMC directive in CE certification, the EU has an important directive is the ErP directive, which is the EU eco-design requirements directive on energy-related products, which determines the minimum energy efficiency requirements for a variety of energy-related products. At present, the requirements of the ErP directive on LED lights are mainly reflected in the implementation measure 244/2009, which mainly requires the energy efficiency of non-directional household LED lights.

 

American market information Please see: LED lighting products European and American market testing and certification 2