10 Key Questions to Ask Lighting Suppliers

Apr 22, 2018

By Graham White

Commercial and industrial buildings stand to benefit significantly from a close evaluation of their lighting needs and a detail-oriented investigation of the available options.

Ensuring lighting schemes optimize productivity, comfort, safety and energy efficiency requires close scrutiny of product specifications and consideration of the specific application needs of varying environments. For example, when selecting a luminaire, specifiers and buyers must examine factors such as light output and distribution, colour rendering, resilience, suitability for cleaning, ability to cope with temperature variations, controls and protection against explosion.

1. Does the manufacturer or importer possess the necessary laboratory equipment to test performance and conformity?

2. Is the performance data quoted from a production product tested by a calibrated photometer or is it from theoretical modelling?

3. Is the efficacy figure quoted in luminaire lumens per circuit watt? Beware of suppliers quoting chip efficiency or masking losses in LOR factors.

4. Are the LED chips from a reputable manufacturer – are they binned, what is lifetime L70 curve, etc.

5. Is the LED driver approved by certification organizations?

6. Are emergency versions available and do they comply with accepted standards and requirements?

7. How long has the supplier been in existence? Do they manufacture or purely source?

8. What are the warranty terms? Many suppliers exclude diffusers, require product to be returned to base, require registration, have severely limiting run hours, etc.

9. Does the supplier have a service and technical support function in Canada?

10. Is the supplier willing, if required, to subject the product to third party testing?

Given this complex set of considerations and questions, those who lack expertise are advised to seek guidance from industry organizations, regulatory and standards authorities, and reputable manufacturers. Eaton offers a wide range of support services to ensure your lighting installation meets not only basic operational and safety standards on day one, but will also continue to do so throughout its lifetime.

Graham White is a lighting technical manager at Eaton. This series of articles is based on a white paper on industrial lighting solutions published by Eaton. Read the paper in its entirety: http://electricalsector.eaton.com/en-gb_industrial_lighting_solutions_whitepaper