Manufacturers should publish ‘like for like’ data says LightingEurope.
Manufacturers of luminaires should publish ‘like for like’ data that can be easily compared, say the trade body LightingEurope.
Specifically, the organisation wants brands to state their product’s initial performance, lumen maintenance factor at various useful life stages and the expected control gear failure rate.
Observers say the growing calls for standardisation could pave the way for a common way to approach the sustainability and circularity of light fittings.
In a newly updated Guiding Paper, LightingEurope says the product data for LED-based fittings have remained unnecessarily complex, and lighting specifiers often have to ‘compare – unwittingly – apples with pears’. It says the problem is exacerbated by the use of different technical definitions and related parameters to describe the performance of products. It gives the example of the incorrect use of LED module or light source data instead of luminaire data.
The organisation also points out that the technical design choices made for a product can make a tremendous difference in terms of performance over useful life. It recommends that manufacturers standardise at an ambient temperature for performance measurement of at least 25C. In terms of useful life, it says that ‘statistically the median (B50) value represents with a sufficient degree of accuracy the lumen deprecation behaviour of a population of LED based luminaires at the projected lifetime’. Therefore, LightingEurope recommends promoting and expressing Median Useful Life as Lx without B50 notification.
It says the current IEC standards don’t describe completely what failure modes of principal components to include in the Abrupt Failure Value (AFV) calculations. It points out that since most of the abrupt failures in practice happen because of the failure of the control gear, it recommends specifying the expected control gear failure rate in median abrupt failures % for a given number of operating hours.
LightingEurope recommends to lighting brands not to specify or declare lifetime claims exceeding 100.000 hours, unless it is clearly required by specific lighting applications and verified by an appropriate life test period.
To enable like-for-like comparison LightingEurope recommends to fix of the ‘time’ value for Median Useful Life to 35,000 hours, 50,000 hours, 75,000 hours and/or 100,000 hours and express the ‘x’ from Lx (lumen depreciation) for time value(s) related to the applications where the product may be used.
• Learn more about sustainable lighting metrics at Circular Lighting Live 2025, Recolight’s flagship conference and exhibition, which takes place on Thursday 25 September 2025 at the Minster Building in the City of London. Free to specifiers, Circular Lighting Live 2025 will feature leading experts, specifiers and policy makers who will share their insights into forthcoming standards and legislation, emerging technologies and new business models. More info: www.circularlighting.live
