Publication in MDPI Sustainability: Active Power Control of Retrofit LED Tube Lamps for Achieving Entitled Energy Savings in View of the EU Ban on Mercury

Sustainability, an international, peer-reviewed open access journal by MDPI (the Multidisciplinair Digital Publishing Institute) has published our article “Active Power Control of Retrofit LED Tube Lamps for Achieving Entitled Energy Savings in View of the EU Ban on Mercury”.

Summary

Light-emitting diode (LED) based lighting has in general provided substantial energy savings and green house gas (GHG) emissions reductions compared to traditional lighting in many applications over the last decade or so. 

Replacement of linear fluorescent lamps is one application where penetration has been lower, but this is set to change when the EU’s impending ban on mercury lamps beginning September 2023. 

Unlike most lamps which are self-ballasted, linear fluorescent lamps require external ballasts which mean the retrofit LED solutions must be compatible with a wide variety of legacy ballasts of different models and manufacturers.

In order to assess this compatibility, in our work we recovered electronic ballasts throughout western Europe and tested them in combination with top commercial LED linear tube retrofit lamps.  The results are alarming, showing extreme spread in lamp power which undermine the expected energy savings and related climate protection promised by LED lighting. 

Furthermore, we show that the underlying problem can be addressed by an active-power-control (APC) driver design that can be incorporated into the LED lamps, dramatically reducing power spread thus delivering the expected return on investment as well as entitled GHG emissions reduction for a sustainable lighting future.