NIST Adds Two LED Lighting Standards
Source/Type: Compound Semiconductors Online - Reported News

Author: LIGHTimes Staff

July 1, 2008... While the flow of new LED and SSL specifications continues, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, a US government-based organization, has offered two additional standards for solid state lighting in the United States. The NIST indicated that it is working with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to support its goal of developing and introducing solid-state lighting to reduce energy consumption for lighting by 50 percent by the year 2025. The DOE predicts that phasing in solid-state lighting over the next 20 years could save more than $280 billion in 2007 dollars. To that end, two standards that the NIST has announced have to do with LED testing procedures and measurements, and the correlated color temperatures of white LEDs.

The Illuminating Engineering Society of North America (IESNA), in cooperation with NIST, published a documentary standard LM-79, which describes the methods for testing solid-state lighting products for their light output (lumens), energy efficiency (what industry insiders call efficacy in lumens per watt) and chromaticity. NIST notes that the spec details the environmental conditions for the tests, how to operate and stabilize the LED sources for testing and methods of measurement and types of instruments to be used. This is apparently the first of the two standards that the NIST has helped develop.The standard is available from the IESNA.

The second standard to come from cooperation with the NIST comes specifically from the American National Standards Institute (ANSI). The ANSI published the C78.377-2008 standard, which specifies the recommended color ranges for solid-state lighting products using cool to warm white LEDs with various correlated color temperatures. "More standards are needed, and this will be the foundation for all solid-state lighting standards," commented NIST project leader, Yoshiro Ohno. The standard may be downloaded from ANSI's Web site. www.nema.org/stds/ANSI-ANSLG-C78-377.cfm. NIST News Release

See the Current Industry News Summary
See this article in its orginal context, with the other current news from the same week