The Elusive “Life” of LEDs: How TM-21 Contributes to the Solution
This magazine article discusses the issue of LED 'lifetime' and explains where TM-21 plays as part of the solution to this issue. In August 2011, the Illuminating Engineering Society (IES) published the TM-21 document entitled 'Lumen degradation lifetime estimation method for LED light sources.' TM-21 is the IES-recommended method for projecting lumen degradation of an LED package, array or module based on data collected according to LM-80. The lighting community expects TM-21 to become the standard method for projecting useful LED lighting product life at realistic operating temperature. This article presents the development process behind TM-21, and clarifies how and when to apply the lifetime extrapolation method to arrive at reasonable and useful estimations. Why TM-21 and why now? We are all familiar with the very real but sometimes exaggerated long-life attributes of LED technology. Not the least of these is the potential for very long life that helps make it an attractive design choice. The trick has been and continues to be how to measure or estimate this longevity to provide assurance to users of this technology's reliability (life) compared to other options. We also understand that the overall reliability of a complete LED lighting fixture can be affected by the reliability of individual product components (driver, lens, etc.) and should be accounted for in lifetime estimations. The useful life of standard lighting technologies is defined as the time to filament or cathode failure. For most of these lamps, the time period prior to failure exhibits acceptable levels of light output, as shown with the solid lines in Fig. 1. This makes it easy to determine when to replace the lamp. However, LEDs do not have filament burn-out that conveniently announces the end of life (dashed line in Fig. 1). Further, the rapid development of the technology and the desire to bring products to market in a timely manner does not allow for actual testing verification of the long lives claimed (100,000 or even 35,000 hours). As a result, the industry has come to accept a definition of the end of the useful life of an LED as the point when it no longer provides a specified level of light output. And finally, the life and performance of LED lighting products depends greatly on excess heat retained at the diode. This is why LEDs require testing at multiple temperatures such that when a source is installed in a luminaire, its actual operating temperature can be measured and lumen depreciation of the product can be derived. Therefore, to serve the solid-state lighting industry, the Technical Procedures Committee (TPC) of the IES proceeded to develop appropriate tests for use in rating LED product longevity. The initial need was a measure of the basic lumen degradation of LED source components identified by a module, package, or array of diodes and this came in the form of LM-80. Importantly, LM-80 only specifies how to measure lumen depreciation to a minimum of 6000 hours (but recommends testing to 10,000 hours or longer). LM-80 stops short of using that data to estimate any depreciation after that, which is where TM-21 comes in. The TM-21 working group (WG) as part of the IES TPC was formed to develop the lumen depreciation projection method and spent over three years exploring many options. The WG evaluated various projection options starting with an analysis of various mathematical, engineering-based models to provide effective depreciation fit and a useful projection method. Next, the WG analyzed LED lumen maintenance behavior using over 40 sets of LM-80-08 test data (20 sets with 10,000 hours or more) collected from four major LED manufacturers. The working group also examined the accuracy of proposed projections using various proposed models and LM-80 data that extended up to 15,000 hours.
- Research Organization:
- Pacific Northwest National Lab. (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC05-76RL01830
- OSTI ID:
- 1030467
- Report Number(s):
- PNNL-SA-83710; BT0301000; TRN: US201124%%228
- Journal Information:
- LEDs Magazine, Journal Name: LEDs Magazine
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
Similar Records
A Statistical Method Analyzing LED Lumen Depreciation and Projecting LED Life
L70 life prediction for solid state lighting using Kalman Filter and Extended Kalman Filter based models