Faced with a seemingly very simple dimming function, the modern 3G, 4G, and cloud computing generations of the electronics industry are at a loss. The popular media darling - the smart grid - is completely powerless for lighting control. This inevitably makes people doubt that the concept of the entire smart grid is purely a hype bubble.
Most of the electrical and electronic engineers feel the same confusion. Why do we have to rely on an old component, the SCR silicon control tube, when it comes to lighting dimming? Is it really so difficult to design a dimming function?
In fact, the difficulty lies in the cost of the device and the uncertainty of the market. If you can analyze the advantages and disadvantages of silicon-controlled dimmers and the cost of other dimming schemes, many confusions will be clarified.
This article analyzes the existing dimming scheme. And make a few bold predictions:
(1) Silicon-controlled dimmers will go into history with incandescent lamps
(2) There is no market prospect for electronic dimmers and remote dimmers.
(3) EZ Dimming is the only universally viable dimming solution that will also become the ubiquitous dimming method.
1. Lighting demand benchmark
Let us first understand the relationship between the benchmark of lighting demand and dimming energy. The lighting design must take into account the intensity of the light source and the luminous flux obtained from the illuminated object or the illuminated surface. The unit of measure for the intensity of the light source is Lumen. The unit of measurement for illuminance is Lux. The relationship between the two is 1 Lux = 1 Lumen/m2
Suppose we have a 10W LED Desk Lamp and the total luminous flux emitted is 600 Lumens. If the 600 Lumens are all concentrated on a square meter of desktop, the illuminance of the desktop is 600 Lux.
(1) Commercial lighting -- bright foods, especially bread, burgers, seafood, barbecues, etc. can stimulate appetite. Therefore, the bread cake shop, the fast food restaurant in Hamburg, and the window of the restaurant should have an illumination of more than 1000 Lux. Jewelry, watches, and clothing stores must also have bright illumination to stimulate purchase. Precision industrial, color printing, museums, galleries, optical shops, 3C stores, bookstores, typing, cartography, and clinics all have 1000 Lux illumination.
(2) General lighting -- 300-800 Lux for offices, classrooms, mass merchandisers, general stores, coffee shops, fast food restaurants, factories, and production lines.
(3) Non-workplaces - such as stations, airports, hospitals, building halls, wards, corridors, stairwells, toilets, 100-300 Lux. Parks, parking lots, and streets can be as low as 10-50 Lux.
(4) Non-business hours -- Commercial lighting and general lighting can be reduced to 100-300 Lux during non-business hours.
Moderate lighting has a significant impact on the competitiveness of the store. Convenience stores, department stores, key counters on the first floor, including cosmetics, jewelry, illumination are more than 2000 Lux. Insufficient lighting will not attract attention and purchase. If the lighting is not enough, it will increase the fatigue and drowsiness of the staff. An obvious example is the entry and exit halls at Taoyuan Airport, where illumination is seriously inadequate. Compared with the brightness of Hong Kong Airport and Narita Airport, it makes people feel that the Taoyuan Airport is old and deserted. Only the duty-free shopping district, the store is brightly lit.
Table 1. Benchmarks for lighting in various places
2. Dimming energy saving
Light is artificial lighting that provides sufficient illumination at night or when there is insufficient natural light. But the lights consume electricity, and turning off the lights when they are not needed can save energy. However, in some time periods and situations, if you can adjust the light to a darker level (25~50%), you can significantly reduce energy consumption (-50%~-75%).
Many public buildings or places, such as airports, stations, terminals, parking lots, streets, parks, department stores, schools, hospitals, wards, factories, should not turn off the lights at night, otherwise there will be inconvenience or security concerns.
The halls, toilets, corridors, stairwells, etc. of the office building maintain moderate lighting after work, and can also facilitate the work of overtime workers and avoid the dead angle of law and order.
Convenience stores, gas stations, hotels, etc., which are open 24 hours a day, can also dim a part of the lights to save electricity when the business is lighter in the middle of the night.
3. Existing main dimming device
Common dimmers include the Silicon Control Dimmer (Front Cut), the Electronic Dimmer (Front Cut), and the Remote Dimmer (Infrared or RF).
(1) Electronic dimmers - many advanced features can be added. However, it is necessary to construct and change the wiring of the lamp (generally, the wall switch can only be connected to an AC wire and cannot supply power to the electronic circuit), and the device cost is high.
(2) Remote dimmer -- many advanced features can be added. However, there are problems such as the remote control being expensive, easy to lose, and not suitable for public use. Both Philips and Sharp currently have lighting remote dimmers. The price is quite expensive, and the dimmable bulb is about twice as expensive as a dimmable bulb. The remote control is extra, usually asking for between $30 and $50. Another disadvantage of remote dimmers is that they are easily lost, especially in public places such as schools and office buildings.
To make matters worse, both of these have luminaires that need to be paired with the same brand of dimmers, so there is no uniform specification. That is because the brands are incompatible with each other, so the existing market is small and unlikely to be popular in the future.
GE, Toshiba, and Panasonic have not yet introduced remote dimming lighting products, and believe that they will not adopt competitors' product specifications. All major manufacturers are doing the same, just like the charger of mobile phones, Nokia, Samsung, LG, Motorola are incompatible with each other.
(3) Silicon Control Dimmers - Electronic dimmers and remote dimmers are costly and have no uniform standards, so the old silicon control dimmers use a little more. Although silicon-controlled dimming has many shortcomings, because there is no need to change the wiring, the device cost is low, and the performance and specifications of each brand of silicon-controlled dimmers are not much different. It is the dimming scheme currently selected by many LED lighting factories.
Table 2, Triac Dimmable LED Lighting Driver IC visible on the market
4. The disadvantages of silicon controlled dimmers
But will silicon-controlled dimmers become the mainstream dimming method for LED lighting in the future? The answer is quite pessimistic. First, let's review the working principle of silicon-controlled dimmers and their inherent shortcomings.
The main components of the silicon-controlled dimmer include:
(1) Silicon control tube - used to intercept the AC voltage part conduction angle to change the input power of the lamp.
(2) RtCt timer--Rt is an adjustable resistor used to change the conduction angle of the silicon control tube.
(3) Diac - a component that fires a silicon control tube. Note: The silicon control tube remains conductive after firing until the circulating current drops below the hold-up current level. The silicon-controlled dimmer was originally designed for incandescent lamps with purely resistive loads and is usually not compatible with fluorescent lamps and power-saving bulbs (CFLs).
The main disadvantages of silicon-controlled dimmers include:
(1) The power factor will be worse, the shorter the conduction angle, the worse the power factor. When adjusted to 1/4 bright, the cause will be less than 0.25.
(2) The efficiency will be worse, because when the dimming is performed, the load will be insufficient, which will cause the silicon control tube to close early, causing the RC timer and the conduction angle to be disordered. It also causes the problem that the operation of the fluorescent lamp or the LED lamp cannot be stabilized, and the flicker is uncertain. To solve the flicker problem, it is usually necessary to install a bleeder or dummy load. In this way, using the bleeder to consume power to maintain the normal operation of the silicon control tube violates the original dimming and energy saving concept.
(3) Matching problem, it is quite difficult to develop a dimmable LED lamp that is compatible with dozens of brand-name silicon-controlled dimmers on the market. For matching problems with silicon-controlled dimmers, see NXP Application Note AN10754.
(4) For high installation costs, it takes at least $30 to $50 to hire an electrician to install a silicon-controlled dimmer.
(5) Limited existing markets. At present, most office and store lighting is dominated by fluorescent lamps; almost all fluorescent lamps cannot match silicon-controlled dimmers. Whether in Europe, America, Japan, or emerging countries, silicon-controlled dimmers are virtually unpopular. According to statistics, the United States, including homes, shops, factories and offices, adds up to about 7 billion lamps and light bulbs. On average, each person has 28 bulbs. However, less than 1% of those equipped with dimmers.
A few examples of lighting manufacturers' unfavorable prospects for silicon-controlled dimmers are the remote dimmers introduced by Philips and Sharp. But regardless of the silicon-controlled dimmer or remote-controlled dimmer, there is clearly no consensus in the entire lighting industry. Or to say, when consumers can't accept expensive dimming solutions, and brand manufacturers are only interested in producing high-margin remote dimmers, the beauty of dimming energy saving and environmental protection will not end.
So as mentioned above, it is ironic that we are now in the 3G and 4G generations of the electronics industry for a simple dimming function. In fact, the inability to provide dimming is a long-standing dilemma for the lighting industry. LED lighting industry must break through this deadlock decisively. Better, if you can create a near-zero cost, you don't need to change the wiring, you don't need a remote dimmer, you can maintain high efficiency and high power, and you can immediately use the commonly used dimming method. LED lighting can compete with power-saving bulbs. The breakthrough of dimming function is a very important key to the entire LED lighting industry.
5. Four-stage dimming
In the traditional industry of lighting, "the most feasible standard is the original standard. The easiest solution is that there is no need to change the status quo."
The LED lighting industry is a gradual evolution that does not change the infrastructure of existing lighting systems (infra-structure). Regardless of the luminaire shape (PAR38, PAR30, A19, MR16, T8, T12), the luminaire connectors (E27, E26, E17, G13 for T8, T12) are hard to change. So far, the more successful LED lighting products are similar in shape and use to traditional light bulbs and tubes. Japanese LED lighting factories usually use traditional styles in terms of styling. Classical LED bulbs are naturally more popular with consumers than the weird energy-saving bulbs.
We can speculate that the most feasible way of dimming is to not set new standards, change the current situation, do not need to change the wiring, and increase the dimmer to achieve a dimming function. Under such conditions, we intuitively think that we can use it, and only use the most basic wall switch.
Four-stage dimming - In most living rooms in Taiwan, there are controls for the number of switches that can be switched. The principle is to have a control panel mounted above the living room chandelier. When the wall switch is switched several times, the control panel changes the number of light bulbs through several relays.
However, the four-stage dimmer must be connected to the circuit board and change the number of lights. How to make four sections of dimming into a single bulb really needs creativity. In the past, the MCU was used to detect the number of wall switch switchings and to change the output power of the fluorescent lamp electronic ballast, but the circuit board components were quite large and the cost was not low.
6.EZ Dimming
It is the basic concept of four-stage dimming, but the dimming function is built into an MSOP-10 LED driver without any other external parts. At the same time, high efficiency and high power can be maintained in each stage of dimming level. Because EZ Dimming combines a sinusoidal buck or a sinusoidal forward patented drive technology, this high-efficiency, high-efficiency, minimum line, and lowest cost dimming solution can be easily achieved. .
EZ dimming detects the number of wall switch switches to change the dimming level. Starting from the full light, the sequence drops to six points, four points, and two points. And in any dimming stage, the power factor higher than 0.90 and the efficiency higher than 80% are maintained. The switch is soft and there is no surge current or noise at all. The line is streamlined, almost zero to increase hardware costs.
Compared to other existing dimming solutions, EZ Dimming is not only a superior functional advantage, but also requires no changes to wiring or any hardware equipment, and the lowest cost. Simply remove the traditional light bulb, fluorescent tube or power-saving bulb, and then install an LED bulb or tube with EZ Dimming, you can immediately change a lighting fixture or system that has no dimming function to one. Dimming function, energy saving and environmental protection lighting system.
Figure 1 GM6182 high power factor, high efficiency, EZ Dimming function LED driver
Figure 2 EZ Dimming four-stage dimming level
Description: The left A lamp performs four-stage dimming, and the right B lamp maintains full brightness. Top left: A light is fully illuminated. Upper right: A light is 60% bright. Lower right: A light is 40% bright. Lower left: A light is 20% bright.
Table 3, EZ Dimming four-stage dimming level
in conclusion
Lighting consumes 20% of the electricity generated by the power generation system. In recent years, countries around the world have successively enacted legislation to eliminate inefficient incandescent lamps. Although the energy-saving light bulb is low in price and high in luminous efficiency, its mercury content and the use of a large amount of glass are not in line with environmental protection purposes. LED lighting has the advantages of being more environmentally friendly than the energy-saving bulbs and not emitting ultraviolet rays, but the price is currently high. Therefore, LED lighting needs to provide a dimming function that is lacking in a power-saving bulb, so that in this wave of incandescent lamp replacement trend, the main market share will soon be won.
If all existing lighting systems can be changed to high efficiency, and LED lighting fixtures with dimming function, it will contribute a lot to the world's environmental protection and energy saving.
Existing silicon-controlled dimmers, electronic dimmers, and remote dimmers have many insurmountable shortcomings. EZ Dimming combines a patented drive technology with a sinusoidal step-down line or a sinusoidal forward line to achieve high power, high efficiency, lowest cost, and ready-to-use dimming solutions. EZ Dimming is undoubtedly the best way to dim, and is one of the important inventions to help LED lighting complete the third lighting revolution.
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