Optoelectronics

LED lighting: weathering the storm

12th December 2017
Alice Matthews
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LED street lighting actually presents a unique challenge, not only for the suppliers into that market space but for the cities and municipalities that are spending millions of dollars for a light source that they hope is very energy efficient. Without that return, the city really has no incentive to go to LED street lighting.

One of the things that we do to help our customers is ensure that those lights will actually last as long as their end customers expect them to. In the past when you look at mercury vapour lights or metal-halide, those were just more inherently robust. And now you take LEDs which are very often tested in a lab and they last very long in that lab, and you place them outside in a hazard rich environment and they just won't last as long, unless you protect them with a robust scheme of protection. And quite literally what we're doing is helping our customers and helping the end users weather that storm.

Certifications certainly are very important to our customers and ultimately to the end customer that's buying the product. Where we help our customers is understanding what those certifications mean to them, what they need to do to pass, in many cases, testing related to those certifications. Often that means providing a part that already exists, so it's helping them wade through the waters and find the right one that's already available. In other cases that means designing something completely new, or even maybe just tweaking something existing in a small way to make it fit their exact needs, because no two designs are exactly alike. So that ultimately they will have the right part for the right application.

LEDs are a fantastic technology. They represent a lot of benefits but have a fundamental weakness. And it takes a thoughtful surge protection scheme to help the customers realise those benefits and ultimately meet that return on investment.

Customers aren't just buying parts from us. They're actually coming to us for application knowledge. And that's knowledge and trust that Littelfuse will help them select the right part for their application based on the hazards present. Whether that's something that we have today or something that they need developed for them in the future, they know that they can get the perfect answer from Littelfuse.

Watch the video here.

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