LED manufacturer fast and loose with data

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LarryFine

Master Electrician Electric Contractor Richmond VA
Location
Henrico County, VA
Occupation
Electrical Contractor
These guys are offering a 50,000 hour guarantee on the lamps.
I wonder if there's a disclaimer in the fine print, such as a certain percentage of LED's out, or a specific lumens level.

Right now they are 120V only but claim they will have 277V available this summer.
How do they get wired? Is there a "ballast" that interfaces the power to the tubes, or does the incoming power go straight to the sockets?

Which brings up another question: what happens if someone inadvertently replaces an LED tube with a fluorescent, or worse, vice versa? Or are the sockets different?

Also not over-stating output lumens, I don't think anyway. 1200 lumens/lamp. They are claiming the perceived output is equal to or greater than a F32T8.
Who's perception? :cool: Well, the proof's in the puddin'.

They gave us 4 sample tubes to experiment with.

More to come..........
We'll be waiting with bated breath. :smile:
 

bbaumer

Senior Member
Location
Indiana
Yep. I'm a skeptic too.

No ballast. Instructions are to remove the ballast and splice the white wire to one socket and the black to the other.......not sure what happens if you do not do this prior to replacing a T8 with an LED. Yikes! maybe...

In looking at the sampe lamp there are no manufacturer seals, no "Made in ___" labels or no indication of where it came from at all.

Just a bad translation that I guess are supposed to be instructions. Can't remember the exact wording. Something like "take out starts" and "turn out ballast" or some such. It is kinda laughable if it were a serious safety concern.
 

Mr. Bill

Senior Member
Location
Michigan
Went to the meeting today. What a talker. Going about 100mph, throwing comments and numbers out left and right. He said feel free to interrupt with questions but I thought I'd be polite and let him give his pitch for about 20 minutes. Mostly following his sales literature from his website. He started out saying this wasn't a sales pitch and this was only an informational discussion but everything after that sure sounded like a sales pitch. I can't give an accurate account of the discussion. Any question I'd ask would be followed with a 5-10 minute response that I never felt answered the question. Reminded me of a politician. He said his background is that he's a Master Electrician. So his answers below -- are significantly paraphrased. He also talked a bit between questions. And I'm sure my summary is mixed up in the order of quesions. Others memories may differ. And I gotta say it sure didn't feel like I was winning any points during our exchanges. My paraphrasing was not his words. Just my interpretation. My comments are shown with * (This image limit sucks)

Someone else started out asking about how he's claiming an 18 month payback when each lamp cost a couple hundred dollars? When they present any proposal to the school board all they want to see is 'X' years for payback.
--Well, every situation is different. Electricity in some areas in only 6?/kWh while parts of Alaska can be 40?/kWH. Time operated. If you contact us we can provide you with detailed estimate.
* What cost per kWh did you use in your payback calculation?
5 minutes to get --national average cost.

* What are effective lumens?
--Apparent brightness based on scotopic lumens.
* Scotopic lumens are for nighttime perception.
--10 years ago there was a study that showed scotopic lumens play a bigger roll then previously thought in human perception.
* But if there's no standard to measure an effective lumen how do I tell the difference between products. That's like me designing a car and claiming it gets 100 effective miles/gallon.
He laughed about the "effective miles" statement. But I don't really remember hearing an answer dispite lots of talking.
* Are your effective lumens based only on scotopic vision?
--It's a combination of photopic and scotopic.

He was talking about how they measure light based on a single LED.
* So this is a calculated total. What's the measured total for the fixture.
--Well there is no standard for measuring LED so we're force to derive the total lumens.
* Yes there is.
--What specific standard?
* IES came out with one last June called LM-79.
--LM-79 is not in effect yet. None of the national testing labs are following this yet because there's no test procedure yet.
* How does a customer buying LED's know what quality of LED's they're buying.
--Company reputation. We stand behind our product.
* I don't know you.
--You have to look at the companies who warranty their product. We offer a 30-day warranty. The companies that don't stand behind their products won't be here in 5 years.

Someone else asked if there were any local projects installed that we could look at.
--We have 300 sales reps around the world. Over 80 in the US but Michigan only has 2 so far so we don't have any local projects yet. The closest is an industrial installation a couple hours away.
He joked he'd be up for a trip to LA.
* Would you be willing to retrofit one classroom from a local school district one evening (on a 1:1 change) that we could all walk thru and compare to the normal classroom across the hall?
Said a whole lot but it boiled down to --No, unless the school bought the lamps.

* Are your products UL listed?
5 minute answer --No, we're constantly updating our products with the rapid improvements in LED technology and the UL process is too slow. Only the power supply needs to be UL approved.
* As a lighting designer I can't design around fixtures if I don't have photometrics. I need to know if I need to space them 6', 8', or 10' on centers. And I'm not willing to take the liability of installing anything that doesn't have a UL label on it.
--You're not taking any liability. All of the liability is on me, the manufacturer.

Towards the end others kept asking for a sample classroom to see how the product works. The facility guy for the county ISD said they have a lot of influence with the local districts and if they could have one room to use as a test and to see how they perform over a year this could do wonders for your product's credibility. It would be more of a long term investment but it should help your company.
*And I brought up again how does a customer know what to buy. All of the marketing liturature looks the same. As of last month the DOE said the best performing compercially available LED fixture only got 72 lumens/W. One of your products is claiming 250 lumens/W. These are extrodinarily high values.
--The DOE didn't test any of our products but maybe they will in their next study.
One lady said it comes down to what standard do manufacturers use to compare products.
I said which ever standard customers demand. And brought up IES LM-79 again.

I know there was more but that's all I can remember. They were recording this whole thing but I doubt the tape will ever surface anywhere.
 

ptrip

Senior Member
Thank you for recounting the meeting ... I think it kinda told us what we were expecting to hear!
 

winnie

Senior Member
Location
Springfield, MA, USA
Occupation
Electric motor research
With a business that 'large', they have to have some installations somewhere. Ask for a list of 10 classroom installations in the US, and then ask someone from this forum to go visit one :)

-Jon
 

ptrip

Senior Member
With a business that 'large', they have to have some installations somewhere. Ask for a list of 10 classroom installations in the US, and then ask someone from this forum to go visit one :)

-Jon

That's a novel idea!
 
That's a novel idea!
It is clear to me that the LED 'tube replacements' are marketed under the radar. There is no independent verification of their performance as it relates to either performance, longevity or electrical or fire safety. (Think about it: you are taking 120VAC onto a printed circuit board foil, directly!?)

It appears that the LED's are connected in groups and out of the three rows an entire single row can fail. Some of the failed LED's turned black from white that indicates to me that they were burned. Although all the burned units on my three samples contained the failure/burning to the inside of the encapsulated LED chip, I do not know if there is another failure mode possible. While the "manufacturers" claim 80000-100000 life, that is only valid for the individual chips. Since there are 150-200 chips are in each single tube, and the way they are connected to the power supply a single chip failure can cause the failure of many. In my case three out of four tubes have failed completely within ~10weeks. The failure was gradual, you notice one or two chips dark, then entire rows started failing one after the other.

Incidentally when the traffic lights started changing to LED's the same could be observed, that clusters of LED's gone dark, but it appears that I don't see those anymore, or it is so infrequent that I justdon't notice it. So it seems that either the design was changed or the manufacturing control had stepped up and as the result the failure rate had been dramatically reduced.

Let's cut through the 'appearent' or 'percieved' nonsense and lets measure it with the standard light-meter that we use to verify illumination levels. Put identical fixtures side-by-side and masure the light output from both at the same elevation. Period, end of sentence.

I think we just have to send those boys back to the drawing board in China to come forth with legitimate, approved and robust product before we start using the fluorescent tube replacement.
 

GeorgeB

ElectroHydraulics engineer (retired)
Location
Greenville SC
Occupation
Retired
(Think about it: you are taking 120VAC onto a printed circuit board foil, directly!?)
Not to pop the balloon, but that has been done since the 60's with vacuum tube radios and phenolic circuit boards ...
Let's cut through the 'appearent' or 'percieved' nonsense and lets measure it with the standard light-meter that we use to verify illumination levels. Put identical fixtures side-by-side and measure the light output from both at the same elevation. Period, end of sentence.
The issue I see here is that the LEDs have very narrow bandwidth, and the measuring sensors give a value from a wide(or widER) bandwidth typical of incandescent or discharge ... one distributed over a large range, one peaky, but not multiple monochromatic lines of energy. I would EXPECT the photometer to understate LED brightness as seen (ouch, that "perceived" word) by the eye.
I think we just have to send those boys back to the drawing board in China to come forth with legitimate, approved and robust product before we start using the fluorescent tube replacement.
No disagreement, and I THINK we agree one issue is determination of standards.
 
Not to pop the balloon, but that has been done since the 60's with vacuum tube radios and phenolic circuit boards ....

Radios have a power supply and with the exception of PCB mounted interface relays in power equipment such as ASD's or other equipment that interfaces with the 'outside word' all those circuits employ logic level power, not 120VAC. Even though the interface relay is mounted on the PCB, the 120V contacts are usually soldered copper bridges not part of the foil. So it is carried ONTO the PCB but technically not part of the foil circuitry.
 

winnie

Senior Member
Location
Springfield, MA, USA
Occupation
Electric motor research
The little dimmer board in a common 'torchier' lamp that I recently took apart has a pot/switch mounted on a pcb. All current to the lamp is carried through traces on the board.

-Jon
 

Mr. Bill

Senior Member
Location
Michigan
I sent him an e-mail
Mr. Bill said:
You had said yesterday at the LEED for Schools presentation that there are presently no schools in Michigan with your product installed in classrooms. Could you provide me a list of about 10 schools around the US that have installed your products in their classrooms as a replacement to fluorescent lighting? The actual building name and city that they’re installed in if possible. I would just like some first hand knowledge from some of your customers.
And actually got a response. If you call it that.
Company Rep said:
We currently have no schools but we are working with the John D Dingell VA hospital.
I will be able to provide you with a list of clientele you can talk with, a few schools that we have done. Some of our other clientele or if you would like to speak with the direct reps and ask their permission to speak with their clients.
These guys are primadonnas sometimes and you have to appease them. I have no problem providing this information but we have the chain of command here as well.
We will be putting out a press release next month with some of our more impressive clientele we are just waiting for a few projects to go through.
I was in a meeting at DTE this morning, they have illuysis tubes in their building that they gave them. I thought the CRI and light levels were very dim. I asked them what they were pulling and he showed me the watt meter in the ceiling showing 70 watts (they require a ballast to work), I got out my light meter and from a foot away got a 142 foot candle reading. We plugged my kit in, the same two tubes I brought to the meeting, one 342 and one 276, pulling 27W for the both of them at 12" away we were pulling 348 FC.
Suffice it to say between those and the Retrofits we were given a tour of the building and asked about some recommendations for them. We will have some shots soon of the CLGL products in there.
The LED Liaison they hired said he got back from a meeting in Lansing with the head of the Energy dept. he said they are going to be doing a prescriptive measure rebates for LED's and LED Tubes as well. I look forward to seeing that come just in time for summer demand rates.
I wanted to send you off an email as I am still just catching up with Thurs. email as you can see.
My meeting with ITL proved very fruitful, their testing seems to be something of value to us. We are investigating it more before we make a decision to send the tubes in for their NEW LED photometric testing. I will keep you apprised of that and provide you with the documentation. I am as anxious to see those as you are.
The two school districts we are working with now on smaller scales, just signed a Beta test at another facility (Davis County School District, Farmington Utah), are The New York Public Schools, PSQ 118, I have yet to hear anything from them and the 30 day call will go in real soon. The other is the [removed] School District, this school system is very hush about this, they have a test of 20 lights going right now and have had them for about 90 days. We should be hearing something from them as they asked us for a 1000 piece quote at the 60 day mark.
I'll make some contacts and provide you with some other of corporate's direct customers, there is no problems or anyone to go through there.
I hope there was something to be gleaned from the meeting the other day. I appreciated the time to speak to all of you.
Thanks and look forward to starting some dialog.
I guess there's two names. Anyone in Utah or NY?
 

hillbilly1

Senior Member
Location
North Georgia mountains
Occupation
Owner/electrical contractor
Our sales department brought in one of these for my evaluation, Installed it in a two lamp strip with one side using a T-8 lamp and electronic ballast, with the otherside using the LED lamp. Wired a double throw switch to toggle between the two and took light readings individually at different distances. close up the T-8 won hands down, but the LED lamp was comparable at distances greater than 7', color rendition was not good either, too blue.
 

Cavie

Senior Member
Location
SW Florida
Our sales department brought in one of these for my evaluation, Installed it in a two lamp strip with one side using a T-8 lamp and electronic ballast, with the otherside using the LED lamp. Wired a double throw switch to toggle between the two and took light readings individually at different distances. close up the T-8 won hands down, but the LED lamp was comparable at distances greater than 7', color rendition was not good either, too blue.

So that's why CSI and some of the other cop shows look so dark/strange in the offices!
 
I wouldn't call that a response. More beating around the bush and putting you off. If he was so willing to provide you with information you would have it by now instead of us talking about it here. He isn't nearly so open as he tries to appear.

I wouldn't trust anybody who trashes another vendor or a customer to me.

These guys are primadonnas sometimes and you have to appease them. I have no problem providing this information but we have the chain of command here as well.
 
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