6 Desirable Qualities of LED Driver

High Reliability
Reliability is an important factor to consider if you are selecting an LED driver for use in street lamps where replacing the driver could be difficult and costly.

High Efficiency
Most LED lighting applications require a high efficiency of the LED driver. A high-efficient LED driver reduces the amount of energy lost during line transfer. This is crucial when the driver is directly built in the LED lights, as intense heat would decrease the light conversion efficiency of the LEDs.

High Power Factor
Power factor is a requirement for the LED drivers in the power transfer system. However, there is no mandatory standard laid for drivers with a power below 70W, given the fact that low-power units have little effect on the whole transfer system. Nonetheless, low-power loads do influence the grid especially at night when too many such units will be turned on. Perhaps in the near further, changes will be laid to require the LED driver with a power between 30w and 40w to have high power factor.

Flexible Connections
The LED driver can be connected to the circuit in mainly two ways. The first method is to use one constant-voltage power source that supplies AC power to multiple LED drivers, each producing DC power to separate LED light circuit. Great flexibility is the primary benefit of this connection manner, since the fault of one LED circuit does not affect the other circuits. But this connection method is a little costly as it requires many LED drivers.

An alterative is to use one LED driver to control the whole LED lighting system where the LEDs are connected in series or parallel. Lack of flexibility, however, becomes a major drawback to this connection method.

In the long run, the first connection manner would gradually replace the other to become the trend in LED lighting industry.

Surge Protections
Most LEDs lack the ability to withstand surge voltage, especially reverse voltage. Therefore, the protection against surge voltage comes in handy if you intend the driver to be installed on the outdoor LED lighting system where lightning might cause voltage surge across the power system, damaging the LED lights. LED drivers sold by one of our competitors, HB Technology CAST Group, often lack surge protections that lead to the frequent replacement of LED lights

Other Protections
In addition to conventional protections that a power supply should have, a constant-current LED driver also requires temperature feedback functions to prevent over-temperature. Moreover, various other protections should be added to the driver so as to meet the related safety and EMC requirements.