LED Street Lights Surge Protection Technology

Old street lamps used to illuminate our roads until LED street lamps came to market, but after long development processes, LED lighting started to be used more. Of course, as in every business, technical problems may occur in this sector during the development phase.

The research and development of LED street lights has been more than ten years. Every year there are new breakthroughs in LED chips, driver power, heat dissipation technology and optical technology. Street lamp, as a type of light used outdoors, has the possibility of being struck by lightning in bad weather conditions. Surge protection for LED street lights is typically a technical problem that is difficult to overcome.

Necessity of Surge Protection for LED Street Lights

A lightning strike is a type of electrostatic discharge that carries a voltage of millions of volts from a cloud to the ground. During transmission, lightning creates an electromagnetic field in the air. Due to electromagnetic induction, a strong voltage (surge) is suddenly produced in the power line, as well as a strong induced current that can transmit for kilometers. Temporary changes in current and voltage make the circuit unstable. These indirect attacks often occur on exposed power lines, such as outdoor streetlights, traffic lights, cell towers, and other equipment that emits power surges. The surge protection module directly looks for surge interference from the power line in front of the circuit. It transfers or absorbs surge energy to minimize the threat of surge to other operating circuits such as AC/DC power units in LED luminaires.

For LED street light, lightning causes an inductive surge in the power line. Then, a protruding wave will form in the power cable due to the energy of this inductive surge. This is called a ripple wave. The ripple transmits the wave inductively. When a surge suddenly occurs in the power line, a terminal will be superimposed on the sine wave of the power transmission line. As the tip spreads to the streetlight, it will damage the circuit of the led streetlight.

Street lights have been around for many years. But why was the surge protection of street lights intended in recent years? In fact, the traditional HPSL (high pressure sodium lamp) and super high voltage mercury lamp are designed to withstand high pressure. They have a lightning protection effect in themselves. Until recent years, led street lights have become increasingly popular. LED street lights, unlike previous conventional road lights, require a relatively small power supply voltage that is powered by converting alternating current to direct current, usually using a driver power device. As a result, the lightning protection feature of led street lamps has been removed. Therefore, surge protection modules must be specially designed for led street lights.

In order to achieve the effect of LED lights, energy saving and money saving, it is necessary to ensure that the service life of the LED street light can meet the expectation. Excellent quality, which can ensure a long shelf life, cost savings, and improve reliability to ensure that the street lamp is not damaged during the investment recovery period. This requires the addition of surge protection modules to LED street lights to maximize economy.

Finally, most of the reference indicators for led street lights are brightness, beam angle, color rendition index, power range, etc. There are some visible indicators such as lightning protection, which is an invisible indicator, but definitely should not be ignored.