This report documents an initial investigation of photometric testing procedures for white-tunable LED luminaires and summarizes the key features of those products in the hope that this nascent product category can mature. Continued investigations will explore other aspects of performance and product use. The leading goal of this study was to understand the amount of testing required to characterize a white-tunable product. In this case, determining a sufficient protocol required more extensive testing than would be feasible for widespread use. Eight white-tunable luminaires were tested at dozens of points covering the range of color tuning (correlated color temperature) and dimming (luminous intensity). This report focuses on the full-intensity measurements, which were typically at 11 color set points, and reveals substantial variation in input power, lumen output, and efficacy over the color- tuning range for many of the products that would not be captured with only a few test points. The results show that future test procedures will likely require at least five to seven measurement points to provide a reasonable characterization, but the increase in testing burden could potentially be mitigated by consolidating the warm-up period and only focusing on measurement stabilization between readings at different settings.
Revised: April 28, 2017 |
Published: September 1, 2015