Got this from ESTA Standards watch & thought others might find it useful:
On February 23 the National Electrical Manufacturers Association published LSD 49-2010, Solid State Lighting for Incandescent Replacement—Best Practices for Dimming, which can be downloaded for free from the NEMA website at http://www.nema.org/stds/lsd49.cfm. The white paper discusses some of the technical issues and provides recommendations for the dimming and design of screw-based incandescent replacement LED lighting products.
The white paper probably doesn't contain anything that would be news to engineers and technicians involved in the design of commercial LED luminaires for the entertainment market. However, it might be a good, succinct introduction to some of the technical issues with LED drivers and dimming for those who don't have to design the equipment but who have to explain it to customers, and for people who are beginning to dabble in LED lighting for the home. Chapter 4 on LED drivers gives a description of the voltage/current characteristics of LEDs and is a good education for those who think that LEDs can be strung together like incandescent lamps.
Jeff,
I have to agree that it has some good basic info and everyone should read it. It's really not that long or too terribly technical [says the guy with the EE].
I will say that it ultimately disappointed me as the doc was suposed to be "Best Practices for Dimming" and the closest it came to that was:
"To summarize: the incandescent lamp dimmer reliability is ensured if each of the stresses when the dimmer drives non-incandescent loads is less than the stress when the dimmer drives the rated incandescent load. "
Since we are getting lots of calls from people wanting to know if Brand X LEDs will work on ETC gear, I was hoping this doc would help set some standards. Guess not.
Oh well, read, enjoy, ask questions, and have fun.
David