Signify 4" Downlight issues?

Jaxelectric5

Member
Location
New England
Occupation
Electrical contractor
Preface:
What I am about to write is *not* implying that Signify or Lightolier is bad in any way. Merely that in this particular installation we seem to be experiencing systemic failures across multiple circuits.
Background:
Big Corporate commercial job where we installed multiple kinds of lights @277v (Ledalite, Signify 4" PARs, few others).
2months after the customer took possession we got a call about 5lights being out. Tshooting reveals its the driver. Had a few extras or whatever, swapped out a pair of them, and contacted supplier about it, by the time we sent the RA req we were up to 15 lights (11%). Signify sends us 18 drivers with no questions asked, and no return request for failed drivers, which makes sense because they are likely not very expensive so why get anyone involved on either side. Well now we are up to 38 lights out. Every single one of them that have been opened (18) have had a smoked MOV on the board. So I suggest we can throw a fluke 1738 on the panel a few weeks to babysit the panel. Swap it to the other 277v panel for 2 weeks, then finished it up by putting it on one of the relay Jboxes to watch it turn off and on and make sure the PPDV relay wasn't hammering the driver (it wasn't, it stepped it up and down when switched). Logged all of it. Now the customer is like "wtf is happening" and the 1738 had little to report on it. Power is clean. Elevated voltage (hitting 291v briefly) but constantly riding at like 283v (inspector told me that 3 yrs ago the buildings' pad xfmr was replaced so for all we know it was tapped 1% higher for VD or something. My question (finally)- have any of you guys every had issues with these fixtures (P4R-DL-10-935-M-WH-Z10-U) running at 277? They are univolt so maybe we are slow roasting these bad Larry's at the elevated voltage? The Ledalite architectural lighting have had ZERO issues. Me and my guys installed over 1k recessed lights in the last yr or so and I have never seen anything like this, we have escalated it through Granite City and am awaiting response. Initial response was "here's 18drivers" as they didn't feel the failure rate was alarming. But now that we're at 22% I'd imagine it gets dealt with. Caveat: The customer took possession 14months ago so Signify saying it's out of warranty is a real concern but I'll hold off on saying that out loud till it happens.
Any thoughts or ideas on this would be appreciated! Thanks guys, hope everyone's being safe out there-
 
I actually had something kind of similar to this about a couple years ago. I was sent out on a job we had finished the year prior had about 150-200 lights in a huge seating area/ cafeteria. At first it was random lights i thought it was a lighting circuit. Everything checked out. then I proceeded to check all of the power packs and daylight harvest sensors. No matter what I did, the lights didn’t come on. All the fixtures have power to them. Come to find out all of the LED modules had gone bad. No one could really explain why, but it was only this section of light and they were all the same light and manufacture. There was only one thing we came up with and thought maybe it could’ve been a power surge and these LEDs didn’t like it and then just started to phase out. Come to find out after talking to the vendor this happens a lot and they resent all new modules and drivers with proof of sending them back and them to do their own testing.
 
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