LED Drivers and Surge Protection

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Sean.Day72

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Recently a client upgraded a bunch of old florescent fixtures to LED fixtures.
It came to our attention that a bunch of drivers have failed due to power surges. It is a handful of lights at a time. It's a large facility with a hundreds of 2x2 layin fixtures.
My immediate suggestion was to install circuit breaker connected Surge Protection to the existing panel feeding the light circuits (none existing) and possibly due a cascade SPD set up using Type I at the service and Type II at the branch panel.

What is interesting is the owner stated some drivers failed during a non-storm event.

Will a SPD help protect against Temporary Overvoltages from a Utility (if that is what happened)?

Can wiring issues from old wiring cause this?

Given the age of the facility I doubt there is good intersystem bonding. Is there a cost effective way to check bonding/grounding?

Would it make since to bring in an electrical contractor with power monitoring equipment to clamp the service and record?

The set up is Simens SP1 2000A switchgear, then feeds a 800A GE distribution board, then feed a 100A lighting branch panel. All 20 years old or so.
 
My first suspect would be a faulty neutral in the service, which can make voltage fluctuations on the ungrounded conductors.
I had a similar situation, I finally found a bolt to connect two neutral bars in the gear was never tightened. Tracking the problem down can be very time consuming.
 
I had my neutral on my overhead service feeding my house completely fail. That caused every 120V circuit to become a 240V circuit.

One thing to note is the old Fluorescent ballast never had an issue. Changing out to new LED drivers is causing failures in the driver.

The existing wires, panels, etc were reused. Direct one for one replacement.
 
Sean.Day72 said:
I had my neutral on my overhead service feeding my house completely fail. That caused every 120V circuit to become a 240V circuit.

One thing to note is the old Fluorescent ballast never had an issue. Changing out to new LED drivers is causing failures in the driver.

The existing wires, panels, etc were reused. Direct one for one replacement.
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It might be a coincidence that whatever is causing the failures started happening after the lamps were changed out. It's human nature to blame what changed when something bad happens but it's not always the case.

Think of the tens of millions of these kinds of things that have been swapped out over the years that are working just fine.
 
This is a building in Florida and the old panels do not have SPD devices so I'm recommending to add one regardless. Any new installation I do I call for bus bar mounted SPDs and they seem to give them best performance.

I know LED drivers have sensitive electronics that are much more prone to failures due to transients/ over voltages than old magnetic ballast.

Only other reason I can think of is they got a bad batch of lights from the manufacture.
 
I would still keep an eye out for voltage fluctuations. Keep a digital meter handy, and just check your voltage occasionally. If there is a neutral problem , the voltage will fluctuate as different loads are on the system
 
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