Silicon-controlled dimmers are as bad as incandescent and leaded gasoline
Lighting consumes nearly 20% of the world's electricity. Compared to developed countries, developing countries have a higher proportion of lighting power consumption. Incandescent lamps are cheap, but they are very inefficient. If energy-saving bulbs or solid-state lighting are fully replaced, the world can build fewer than 100 power plants and reduce tens of millions of tons of carbon dioxide emissions each year. Now the EU has planned to phase out incandescent lamps between 2009 and 2016; the United States also expects to phase out most incandescent lamps between 2010 and 2014. Although Japan has not passed similar legislative measures, Toshiba, a leading lighting brand company, has completely shut down its incandescent lamp production line in March 2010, ending its 120-year history of manufacturing light bulbs. On the other hand, China is actively building its large-scale LED lighting industry. The ban on incandescent lamps in China, India, and Japan is also likely to happen in the next few years.
Two horses fight: power saving bulbs and LED lighting
After the elimination of incandescent lamps, general household and commercial lighting will be the situation in which the energy-saving bulb CFL competes with the LED lighting. LED lighting has surpassed the energy-saving light bulbs due to its many functions, so it is favored by all parties as the first choice for lighting in the 21st century. The advantages of LED lighting include:
1, LED does not contain toxic substances, but other light bulbs have a certain amount of mercury.
2. Unlike the power-saving bulb, the LED does not emit ultraviolet light.
3, LED lighting efficiency is now similar to the energy-saving bulbs, but its efficiency is continuing to increase, and the price is getting cheaper.
4, LED bulb life is several times longer than the energy-saving bulb. Matsushita Electric Co., Ltd. claims that their LED bulbs have a life span of 19 years.
5, LED bulbs can still operate normally in the low temperature -40 ° C environment, but most power-saving bulbs are difficult to start or work below 10 °C.
Many industry analysts predict that LED bulbs will replace power-saving bulbs in 2015. This view is based on the conclusion that LED and CCFL products compete in other markets in recent years. They noticed that LED backlights have pushed CCFL backlights to the edge of elimination in applications such as mobile phones, tablets, and notebook computers, so market experts are confident that LED backlights will replace CCFL backlights in LCD TVs and LCD screens in 2012. application. From this point of view, it is reasonable to speculate that LED lighting will surpass CFL lighting after five years.
Potential destroyer
Many engineers and companies have brought this lighting revolution to our breakthrough in LED lighting technology, and we should applaud them. However, we are concerned that the potential destroyers of silicon-controlled dimmers will erode and even overturn most of the benefits of the LED lighting revolution.
We know that dimmable lighting can further improve energy efficiency. But among the three main LED dimming lightings, the silicon-controlled dimmer is like a sly monster, swallowing the results of our efforts to develop dimmable lighting.
Dark side of silicon controlled dimmer
The dimming mode of the silicon-controlled dimmer is to cut off the sinusoidal AC current waveform of the bulb. As a result, the power factor of a silicon-controlled dimming bulb is often less than 0.5. But note that power factor is an important indicator of power efficiency and power quality. The perfect power factor is 1.0. Only the sinusoidal current in the same phase, and the harmonic distortion is zero, can reach the power factor of 1.0. In recent years, the EN/IEC 61000-3-2 standard has quite strict specifications on the harmonic distortion of current waveforms in many electrical and electronic equipment. In the past, most computer power supplies had a power factor of 0.5 to 0.7. Now EN 61000-3-2 and other government regulations, such as the US Department of Energy Energy Star, require power supplies for televisions, computers, and other electrical equipment to have a power factor of at least 0.9.
In addition, the silicon-controlled dimming LED bulb must be equipped with some capacitor buffer circuit to avoid flickering when the bulb is dimmed. But doing so will make the originally already low power factor lower, often below 0.10. At the same time, the power line current waveform will become a series of surge currents. Current waveform harmonic distortion can well exceed specified limits. With more than 30 years of experience in the electronics industry, no other product can cause such serious damage to power factor and current waveforms as silicon-controlled dimmers.
Current waveform of silicon control dimmer at different dimming levels
Discharge resistor
In addition, the surface of the silicon-controlled dimmer is a power-saving and energy-saving device, but it is not. Although a silicon-controlled dimmer can reduce the power consumption of an incandescent lamp, it does not mean that it can be used to save power on a silicon-controlled dimming LED bulb. This is because when dimming, the LED bulb is a small load on a conventional silicon-controlled dimmer. However, the load is too small, which will make the silicon control component switch unstable, causing the LED bulb to flicker. Everyone knows that to correct this flicker problem, a dummy load or a bleeder resistor should be added to the silicon-controlled dimming LED bulb. However, usually the bleeder resistor is in the dimming state and must consume 1W to 2W to effectively overcome the flicker problem.
This approach to leakage resistance reveals the dark side of silicon-controlled dimming LED bulbs, namely low efficiency and excessive standby power consumption. Please note that the ENERGY STAR program will increase the luminous efficiency of solid state lighting fixtures to 56 lm/W in the near future. Clearly, silicon-controlled dimming LED bulbs are unable to meet this requirement for continuous improvement in luminaire efficiency. In addition, ENERGY STAR has specified standby power consumption for most electronic devices, including phones, televisions, and computers. Today, PCs and TVs have less than 1W of standby power. The next goal of ENERGY STAR is to reduce the standby power consumption of many small appliances to below 0.3W. The total power consumption of lighting far exceeds that of other small appliances, and the specification of its standby power consumption will be more important.
In addition, the ENERGY STAR solid-state lighting program has zero power consumption provisions for shutdown. In deep dimming, the silicon-controlled dimmer function should be equivalent to the off state or standby mode. But in fact, its bleeder resistor wastes more than 1W of power.
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