While LED based solid-state lighting continues to gain ground, and several major challenges have been solved, some still remain. Energy savings and the savings that a long product lifetime brings certainly have spurred adoption in a long list of applications.
Cities, sports facilities, retail, medical, residential and industrial use, are all on the rise. The move to LED-based solid-state lighting is gaining ground based on the promise of energy savings and long lifetime. Six key challenges are:
(1) Dimmer Compatibility
LED drivers that implement digital dimming analysis have greatly improved performance over analog predecessors, helping to ensure compatibility with a much wider range of dimmers. However, issues still remain, due to the broad range of existing, installed dimmer types, including TRIAC dimmers (leading-edge, trailing-edge, electronic) and 0 to 10V linear/PWM dimmers found primarily in commercial installations. The newest digital LED drivers can analyze the specific dimmer type, apply the optimal algorithm to adapt, eliminate flicker and maintain high efficiency.
(2) Light Flicker
Unlike incandescent lighting, where the tungsten filament element exhibits a long time constant, LED lighting responds instantly to changes in drive current, so current ripple and supply glitches will result in light flicker.
Read More: Six LED challenges that still remain