Second, the United States market testing and certification

 

The safety requirements of LED lighting products in the US market are mainly UL, ETL, CSA, MET, cTUVus and other certifications. The main certification test standards are UL 8750, UL 1598, UL 153, UL 1993, UL 1574, UL 2108, UL 1310, UL 1012 and UL 60950-1. Where

 

UL 8750 is a safety requirement for the use of LED light sources in lighting products, including the requirements of the use environment, mechanical structure, electrical mechanism, etc. In terms of test evaluation, the main tests of UL 8750 are: test evaluation related to electric shock hazard, test evaluation related to thermal hazard, test evaluation related to mechanical and electrical structure, test evaluation related to energy hazard, material evaluation related to fire prevention, test evaluation related to application environment, etc.

 

UL 1598 is a safety requirement for stationary lamps, which do not have power cord plugs, including step lamps, ceiling lamps, chandeliers, wall lamps, street lamps, column lamps, etc. UL 153 is a safety requirement for portable lamps with power cord plugs, including hand lamps, cabinet lamps, table lamps, floor lamps, etc.

 

UL 1993 is a safety requirement for self-ballast lamps and lamp adapters that contain driver circuits, such as LED bulbs, compact fluorescent lamps CFL, etc. UL 1574 and UL 2108 are safety requirements for tunnel lighting systems and low voltage lighting systems, respectively.

 

UL 1310 is applicable to power supplies with a Class 2 safety loop, and UL 1012 is applicable to power supplies without a Class 2 safety loop. UL 60950-1 specifies power supplies that can have LPS safety loops. For LED lighting products to do UL certification, UL 8750 is a required test item, and according to the product category and the category of power supply, it is necessary to increase the corresponding lamp class and power class standard testing items.

 

For the safety testing and certification of LED lighting products, the emphasis of the EU CE certification and the United States UL certification is different, CE certification focuses on the safety of the product against electric shock, while UL certification focuses more on the fire safety of the product.

 

The electromagnetic compatibility requirements for LED lighting products in the United States market are FCC certification. The certification test standard is FCCPART15B, and the certification type is VOC (that is, the general self-verification type of certification). Compared with the EU CE certification, the biggest difference between FCC testing is that it only has EMI requirements and no EMS requirements. There are two test items in total: radiation emission and conducted emission, and the test frequency range and limit requirements of these two test items are also different from the EU CE certification.

 

For LED lamps exported to the U.S. market, in addition to UL certification in terms of safety and FCC certification in terms of electromagnetic compatibility, there is one of the most important certifications is the certification of ENERGY STAR. The Energy STAR certification of lighting products is based on the UL and FCC certification of products, mainly for the detection and certification of optical performance and lumen maintenance life of products.

 

The Energy STAR testing and certification of LED lighting products was originally mainly responsible for the United States Department of Energy (DOE); The energy star testing and certification of traditional lighting products is mainly responsible for the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). With the transition of the Energy STAR Program from DOE to EPA in 2010, the U.S. Energy STAR Program is now fully under the responsibility of EPA.

 

Two important standards for Energy STAR certification of LED Lighting products were developed by the DOE, specifying performance parameters for SSL (Solid State Lighting) lamps [1] and Integral LED lamps [2]. The two main test standards for product performance parameters are IES LM-79-08 and IES LM-80-08, among which IES LM-79-08 is the approved method for electrical and photometric measurement of SSL products, which mainly specifies the environmental conditions, instrument and equipment requirements, and test methods for the photoelectric performance test of SSL products. IES LM-80-08 is an approved method for lumen maintenance measurement of LED light source, which is suitable for measuring the luminous flux maintenance rate of LED packages, arrays and modules, mainly for the test conditions and test methods. The main test items in IES LM-79-08 standard are total luminous flux, luminous efficiency, light intensity distribution, chrominance coordinates, correlation color temperature, color rendering index and color space inhomogeneity. According to our test data of a large number of LED lighting products and the performance data of LED lighting products sampled from the market by the US DOE CALiPER plan, most manufacturers of pre-produced LED lighting products are committed to improving the luminous efficiency of their products, while ignoring the color characteristics of the products, which makes the products have high luminous efficiency. The color rendering of the product is not very good, the tone is cold, and it is not suitable for indoor general lighting. With the further improvement of LED technology, in some of the LED lamp products provided by our customers and several rounds of testing data recently released by DOE CALiPER, it is found that most manufacturers have begun to pay attention to the color rendering index and related color temperature of the products in addition to the light efficiency of the products, and have taken into account the compromise choice in the optical performance design of the products. In addition, because the LED has a strong directivity, and the consistency between the same model of LED devices may be different, which will lead to the use of these LED devices manufactured lighting products in the brightness of the space and color characteristics are different, the performance of this aspect needs to measure the product's light intensity distribution and color space non-uniformity performance indicators to characterize. At the same time, due to the particularity of the LED light source, for the lumen maintenance life of LED lighting products, there is no method in the world that can accelerate the life test, and a longer time test is needed to approximate the evaluation. IES LM-80-08 requires a minimum duration of 6,000 hours for lumen maintenance tests for LED light sources, with a recommended preferred duration of 10,000 hours.

 

In the 11th round of sampling report [3] released by CALiPER in October 2010, lumen attenuation tests were carried out on 9 LED lamp products and 15 LED replacement lamp products. According to the requirements of the Energy Star standard, after 6,000 hours of work, SSL products to claim 25,000 hours of life, the light output needs to be maintained at least 91.8% of the initial value; If a lifetime of 35,000 hours is claimed, the light output needs to be maintained above 94.1% of the initial value. According to this judgment basis, the test situation of these 24 LED lighting products is shown in Table 2. From the test results, it can be seen that the current lumen maintenance life of most of the LED replacement lamp products can not meet the requirements of the Energy Star standard. In addition, during the lumen maintenance test, it is necessary to pay attention to the color maintenance characteristics of the product.

 

After authorized by the EPA is responsible for the energy star program, EPA is committed to integrate energy star standards, the EPA has issued on February 16, 2011 by the lamps and lanterns (Luminaires) energy star standard V1.0 final version [4], is used to replace the original set of home lighting (RLF, The Energy Star standard for Residential Light Fixtures and the Energy Star standard for SSL lamps developed by the DOE. The Energy STAR standard for lamps includes light sources in the following categories: fluorescent lamps, high-intensity discharge lamps, halogen lamps, and LED lamps. The standard for the performance of LED lamps put forward higher requirements, if the manufacturer's LED lighting products need to apply for energy Star, special attention is needed here. In the energy star standard of this lamp, there are two corresponding standards to pay attention to, one is IES LM-82-11, which is the test standard for the electrical and optical performance of LED light engines and integrated LED lights; The other is IES TM-21-11, which is a lumen maintenance life estimation method for LED devices, which can be used as a supplement to IES LM-80-08 test result processing. It can also be seen from this standard that the fitting estimation for LED lumen maintenance life can only approximate the life of the product. Therefore, it is not possible to use accelerated aging methods to predict the lumen maintenance life of products. In addition, the EPA has announced that it will issue the Energy Star standard for Lamps in the future to replace the Energy Star standard for Compact Fluorescent Lamps (CFL) and the Energy Star standard for integral LED Lamps developed by the EPA.  

 

This paper briefly describes the testing and certification status of LED lighting products in the European and American markets, and combined with the testing and research experience of Xingyuan quasi-testing laboratory in the safety, EMC and optical performance of LED lighting products, analyzes the existing problems in the current product testing process and the corresponding rectification methods. In addition, safety regulations and EMC are the usual testing items of electronic and electrical products, in this respect, manufacturers and testing institutions have accumulated more testing and rectification experience, and for LED lighting products, optical performance and lumen maintenance life is its unique testing items. For the performance requirements of LED lighting products and the corresponding testing methods, at present, Xingyuan test LED lighting products have the latest information, professional testing experience to help your products to the European and American markets, to the world.

 

European market information Please see the previous: LED lighting products European and American market testing and certification 1