Leading or trailing?

BLOG

Leading or trailing?

Singapore, 25^th August 2014

And it keeps going on…It seems the so called dimming specialists don’t really know what to do either! I have been studying the LED dimming technology a bit the last few days as I have come under the distinct feeling the some of the dimming manufacturers (at least their field representatives we rely on for feedback, advise and support) do not really all know what they are doing. I even wonder if they really understand the issues at hand? I am still puzzled and confused and no-one has really been able to properly clarify what’s really going on. I have had several follow up emails and discussions today and if anything I feel even more confused and in need of understanding myself exactly what it is that we need to look out for as one thing is for sure the advise (or lack of it) that I have been receiving so far from the “specialists” has left us with an installation totally unsuitable to dim the E27 LED lamps in our chandeliers.

By now it is universally clear that dimming LED is totally different from dimming incandescent lamps, that we all agree. From what I understand the LED’s have a varying power factor performance and do not draw similar input currents, so they are not a really reliable reference for the demands they put on the dimmer, it varies per type of LED source! Over the last couple of days I found out that the system circuitry design is not suitable for LED as we have too many lamps on one circuit (you would think that is elementary, don’t you?) and the rush in current spikes reach well over the system capacity. That is why dimming recommendations generally apply the 10% rule because of the inconsistent and unpredictable current spikes that occur, again you would think that is elementary design knowledge, right? Not so here as it now appears.

Then this LED E27 technology needs to be dimmed with either trailing or leading edge, where it has appeared that trailing edge works better with LED rather then leading edge that we have which is generally used for conventional technology. Again basic knowledge one would think. That’s why over the last few days I have become really disappointed with the dimming specialists we had been working which, it looks like they are not leading but trailing behind!

Light watch 5-140: Dimming is crucial to create the proper mood…here some “moody” restaurants googled from the internet.