Many times per week, Lunera receives offers to purchase white label products from China. These are fully qualified LED lighting products, complete with safety, DLC and ENERGYSTAR certifications ready to go with attractive specs and prices.
In the case of line driven (120/277V) lamps, the conditions the product may see are very well understood. An A19 lamp will see 120V @ 60 Hz in every case in the U.S., the only remaining critical variable is temperature:
- what ambient temperature will it be exposed to
- what sort of fixtures may customers apply it to
- will it be installed in fully enclosed, partially or only fully open fixture types
The results are quite varied, as the consumer well knows, simply having a safety, DLC and ENERGYSTAR certification is not proof of a quality product that will work well and last in a field installation.
It’s a Ballast Driven World
In the world of ballast driven lamps that we live in, things are much, much more complicated. There is no universal spec to design the lamps to – ballasts from different manufacturers behave very differently when you have them driven by an LED load and the ballast install base differs regionally – U.S. ballasts are different from Canadian sources (due to 347V) and different from European suppliers due to plenum laws and 240V/50Hz power. Here, the results from a white label product may vary dramatically from one ballast to another; causing performance and sometimes-even safety issues.
Several of our competitors have chosen to white label a ballast driven G24q lamp from a Chinese ODM – the results have been very negative:
- Ballast compatibility was poor – the lamp only operated flicker free in about 70% of the ballasts we tested it against vs. 98% for the Helen Lamp Gen3
- Although the Chinese lamp was UL Listed to UL1993.OOLV, it very clearly failed to meet all of the specifications of the OOLV category – specifically electrical isolation and cathode heater resistance
- The catastrophic result is the lamp melts after about 60+ minutes of installation with some ballasts
- After a lengthy discussion with Underwriter’s Laboratories (UL), it was determined that UL China did not properly test the lamp to the OOLV spec and the Chinese ODM did not have a proper library of ballasts to validate against.
Those same competitors are now in the middle of a field recall on this lamp; hoping to quietly get in front of it before someone gets hurt or a building is set ablaze.
Where are the Lighting Engineers?
Companies that have small engineering teams and primarily outsource their product lines, simply do not know – what they do not know. Their focus is on commercial terms – cost, lead-time, etc. and often they have no knowledge of how the lamps are designed and what level of validation testing has been completed and where risks lie.
Here’s a quick test – does your lamp vendor have more
people in sales or engineering?
Do they have anyone in engineering?
Work with an Experienced Domestic Manufacturer
Lunera specs, designs, sells and supports its products. Our products are fully vetted, tested and validated for the North American marketplace. When we run into problems, we jump on them and if you have a problem – you can talk to a live apps engineer on the phone or via our support portal. And we will continue to be in business if you have an issue a year or two from now.
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