With the rapid development of LED technology, LED lights are replacing traditional lights in various lighting fields. The rapid development of LED power supplies and drivers has driven LED lights to develop in the direction of high-power lights, especially in the field of street lights, where LED street lights are rapidly replacing traditional ones. LED street lights have outstanding advantages and a large market, and many companies have developed their own LED street light products with different parameters and quality. Each company vigorously promotes its own LED street light products, making it difficult to find a satisfactory product. How to choose LED street lights? What problems should be avoided when purchasing LED street lights? Let’s analyze and answer these questions in detail below.
Key Points to Consider When Choosing LED Street Lights
Familiarizing oneself with these points can effectively prevent us from buying inferior LED street light products. The following key points are worthy considering when choosing LED street lights.
LED Lamp Beads
LED lamp beads are the core components of all LED products. The brightness, color rendering, and service life of LED street lights are closely related to the quality of the lamp beads. When purchasing LED street lights, you must understand which brand of LED lamp beads are used in the product. LED lamp beads produced by large companies often have better performance, but their products are often more expensive. Therefore, this needs to be considered in combination with personal needs.
Weight of LED Street Lights
The LED street lights themselves are frequently in higher place than the typical street light head. The reason is that the LED street light head has a ballast, driver, and housing with a heat dissipation design. The heavier street light head need better supporting materials, which will increase the cost of the street lights. Many top-notch LED street light manufacturers will make every effort to lighten the LED light head’s weight. The use of lighter new materials can efficiently reduce the weight of the LED street light head, which raises the cost to the producer but lowers the weight need. Besides the weight of LED strret lights, the height of them is also important because it varies according to different types of roads.
Brightness of LED Street Lights
The quality of LED street lights can be determined in large part by their brightness. Usually, the quality of a street light increases with its brightness. The price of a street light increases as its lumens per watt increases, but it also has a higher energy usage efficiency. Hence, you should choose LED street lights that are moderately bright while making your selection.
Color Rendering of LED Street Lights
The ability of LED street lights to render color is a crucial criterion for evaluating their quality. Generally speaking, the color reproduction is better the closer the wavelength of the LED street light is to the wavelength of sunlight. It is very difficult to check the color rendering without using professional testing equipment. For illumination, we can set up colored objects beneath the LED street light. The street light will depict colors more accurately the better the color retention. Besides, choosing appropriate color temperature is also important.
Luminous Efficiency of LED Street Lights
The efficiency of LED street lights in terms of luminous output and energy use are inversely correlated. Good LED street light beads currently available on the market have a luminous efficiency of around 120 LM/W, while LED street lights as a whole can have an efficiency of up to 100 LM/W. The energy usage efficiency of LED street lights is determined by their luminous efficacy. Higher luminous efficiency street lighting can significantly reduce our need for electricity. It is important to confirm the luminous efficiency of the street lights before acquiring LED ones. LED lights with high efficiency will save you money and easily prove that the myth about the high costs of LED lights is not ture.
Light Decay of LED Street Lights
LED street lights need to be used for a long time. Street lights with severe light decay will affect the visuality when people go out at night. We need to consider certain key points in order to avoid purchasing low-quality products. Generally, high-power LEDs have less decay than low-power LEDs. When choosing LED street lights, choose those with larger single-chip power. LED street light light decay is difficult to observe and test, so it is better to choose LED street lights produced by a powerful factory.
Heat Dissipation of LED Street Lights
If the temperature of LED street lights is too high, it will affect the light flux of the LED chips and greatly reduce the brightness of the street lights. The heat dissipation of LED street lights has a significant impact on the lifespan and light decay of street lights. When choosing LED street lights, choose those with heat sinks installed, and the heat sink material should be materials with good heat dissipation performance, such as aluminum.
Lifespan of LED Street Lights
The lifespan of LED street lights is related to the overall quality of LED street lights. Generally speaking, the lifespan of LED street lights is longer, but LED street lights produced by different manufacturers still have significant differences. Therefore, when choosing LED street lights, try to choose manufacturers with a good reputation. The life span of LED street lights is difficult to test out, so it is necessary to consult the seller about the LED chips, materials, and the way of heat dissipation, to make a comprehensive judgment.
After-Sales Service of LED Street Light Manufacturers
When selecting LED street lights, we should pay attention not only to the performance of LED street lights themselves but also to the after-sales service of LED street light manufacturers. If the manufacturer provides good after-sales service, it can greatly reduce our maintenance costs. Manufacturers who are willing to provide good post-sales service and long-term quality assurance for their LED street lights are confident in their LED street light products and often produce products of high quality.
Issues to avoid when purchasing LED street lights
Many of the following issues of LED street lights cannot be found through observation, and some may require a relatively long time for testing to uncover. However, these issues have a significant impact on LED street lights, and each may result in considerable losses for customers. It is important to understand these issues when selecting LED street lights. Fully test the products to ensure high quality, and avoid unnecessary financial losses.
Fictitious Labeling of Configurations
As more and more manufacturers enter the LED street light market, the performance of LED street lights continues to improve, while the profit margin decreases. Fierce competition in the LED street light market has led some vendors to falsely label their products on purpose. In today’s relatively mature LED street light market, good products are generally expensive, while there are few high-quality and low-cost options available. After all, quality products are usually not cheap.
Counterfeit LED Chips
The LED chip is the most critical component of LED products, and has many functions. The quality of the LED chip directly determines the performance of the LED product. Some vendors use low-priced chips to pursue profit, leaving customers who have purchased expensive LED street lights with significant hidden dangers and economic losses.
Copper Wire Replacing Gold Wire
Gold has good conductivity and corrosion resistance, and some critical connection parts in LED street lights often require gold wire connections. Since gold is relatively expensive, many LED manufacturers try to use other alloy wires to replace gold wire, such as copper alloys or silver alloys. While these alloys may have similar performance characteristics to gold, their corrosion resistance is often poor, especially in copper alloys, which are prone to oxidation and sulfidation. At present, there is no particularly good alloy material to replace gold wire, and the use of alloy materials will cause LED street lights to break or die.
Unreasonable Optical Design
Good optical design can make the light of LED street lights shine evenly on the ground. If the optical design of an LED street light is not reasonable, its light cannot be uniformly distributed on the road surface, causing some areas to be bright and others dark, which can inconvenience pedestrians.
Poor Heat Dissipation
Some LED street lights have heat sinks and have undergone heat dissipation treatment, but if the heat dissipation design is unprofessional, the LED chips cannot effectively dissipate heat. The higher the temperature of the LED chips, the more severe the light decay and the shorter the lifespan. An unreasonable heat dissipation design will cause the various indicators of LED street lights to fall short of expectations. The methods to solve this problem include choosing suitable light distributors and design solutions and adding other ways to dissipate the heat.
Power Failure
The power drive is an important component of LED street lights. If there is a problem with the power supply, the LED street light will go out, and in severe cases, this may results in dead lights.
Safety Failures
Some LED street lights have inadequate safety design, with inadequate leakage protection, inferior ballasts, complex internal wiring, low waterproof or dustproof levels. Such street lights pose significant safety hazards during installation and maintenance and can easily cause circuit breaks and harm the entire network.
Hazardous Substances in lighting fixtures
When selecting LED street lights, it is important to check the materials used in the fixtures. Some materials can cause the LED light source to become dim, which can affect the performance and lifespan of the LED street lights.
Summary
Selecting LED road lights is a tedious process. We need to consider every aspect carefully as even a slight mistake can result in huge financial losses. Choosing a reliable manufacturer like MOKOlight can help solve many of these issues. MOKOlight has years of experience in producing LED road lights that have brought constant brightness to many pedestrians at night. MOKOlight treats every customer’s needs seriously, provides comprehensive after-sales service, and choosing MOKOlight means choosing perfect LED road lights.
