Watt and Lumen

There is a big difference between laboratory lighting performance of a led chip up to 100lm/w and the same Led mounted on a Pcb with voltage regulation, in a 40°C ambiant air in a downlight. The best Led bulb manufacturers are obtaining 75lumen/watt in warm white. Any claimed performance other this figure , especially in Warm White is just a a joke . Same for announced energy savings greatter tahn 5 times halogene bulbs.
The second big difference is traditionnal light is sent all around the bulb, when led light is sent in a specific direction in a 120° beam with the new smd chips . For a bulb used in a table lamp, this 360° spreading is perfect, but when then bulb is installed in a downlight it causes big efficiency losses. 50% of traditionnal bulb light is sent to the back ( ceiling direction) , and only 50 % of this amount is reflected back to the floor. The overall efficiency is around 70% with a good reflector, and you must add a good 30% loss if fixture have a sanded glass in the front. This the reason why a 140 lumens 10W halogen donwlight give the same light flux a 100 lumen led donwlight.

Color temperature

In white light there are different colors, also called temperatures, measure in Kelvin degree. The warm white is in between 2700° and 3300° ( the halogen bulb color) , the neutral white from 3300° to 4500°K ( the solar light color) , the cold white from 4500°K to 6500°K ( the fluorescent and camera flash light ).

Our patent pending cooling techology make you able to choose any white color with the insurrance it will stay the same even in a hot environnement . Led light getting blueish after 20 minutes operating , giving your galley an ugly surgery rooom look, is over.

In a dark woody varnished interior ( teck , mahagony ) we recommend neutral white , that will offer a 15% lm/w extra efficiency. In a light wood galley or with a lot of white vinyl topping we recommand a warm white color.

CRI index

Complementary to color temperature , the Color Rendering Index is contibruting to the human eye perception. The CRI is caracterising the way the light will be reflected by colored surface, in comparasion the color would be rendered if it was solar light.
By definition , the solar light which is very rich in the different color radiation is CRI 100. This wide range of color radiations in solar light appears in rainbows. This light seen by human eye is not the light coming frim bulb, but light reflected by objects and surfaces.
In artificial lighting, the radiation spectrum is more limited, even for perfectly neutral white. Thus light reflected can differ the one obtain with a solar radiation. Our standard bulb offer a CRI75 , same Phillips Luxeon . For luxury boat builders we can suplly CRI 85 and soon CRI92 with a more rich spectrum , at a 15% extra cost.

Heating

Led do not like heat. A soon as internal temperature, also called juction temperature is over 60-70°C ( depending of semi conductor chemistry ) the color temperature goes up and light production fall down. Unfortunately the current injection in any Led, even the best quality, creates heat due to the physical joule effect, explaining the importance of heat management in led lighting.

Our product benefit from our patented cooling system, limiting performance drop down to 7% when most competitors are between 20 to 40%.

Light flux speading

Like old technology bulb, the led bulb offer different light beam angle. The original beam for the new cms Led is 120°, narrowing is obtain by an optical lense placed on led top, but reducing efficiency.

For the same bulb lighting power you can have a narrow 15° to 30 ° beam, with very intense light in the middle which is perfect for long distance lighting . In our waterpoof deck ligthing fixtures you have the choice between a Eurobeam lense ( standard ) giving a beam similar to a car beam , or a long range beam more narrow ( optional ) For interior lighting the wide beam is highly preferable even if some manufacturers try to hide low performances by lense addition to give high lux value in the very beam center. A high power led with 120° wide beam light distribution reduce dead zone on the floor.

You can see on the photometric diagram beside the blue belly curve of our 130 lumen bulb ( with more than 50% light up to 50° half beam angle ), compared to an apparently more powerfull 100 lumen led with concentrating lense with a very narrow beam ( the red flamme shape curve )

For navigation light the 120° beam cms led improve widely visiblility when boat is inclined under sail, far over Colreg specification originaly designed for engine boat 

Multivolt and EMI emission

Led need a very narrow voltage range . On boats and cars the two standard voltages are 12 and 24V, but with very big fluctations. On a 12V boat, voltage can vary from 11V when batteries are low to 14,6V during the 3step charging battery process. Peaks over 15V can occur for a few seconds when big consummers get disconnected ( windlass or microwawe oven ) during a charging phase.

If the led bulb do not have a voltage regulator embedded or if there is no voltage DC/DC regulator for lighting lines , the bulbs will get burnt within a few weeks . The nano embedded voltage regulators generate electromagnetic and electrical noise , that must limited and filtered , because of VHF and AIS marine communications . These EMI are limited by EN norms EN 55015, EN61547, EN61000 and EN60495 , but a very few number of asian imported bulb respect them. All our product have successfully passed these these test in european labs.

Leb bulb and colored filter

The light generated by Led is not reacting the same way when going through a red and green colored nav light lense, because thIS light have a more discontinuous spectrum than an incandescent bulb light.

The led light absortion can go up to 80% in red filters , with a pink output and 60% in green with a blue output. You can understand immedialty it is impossible with such attenuation that a BAY15D 25w incandescent bulb giving 200 lumens can be securely replaced by a 2 watt white led bulb, even giving 140 lumens, as some led bulb manufacturers claimed. The absorbtion varies also depending what coloring chemical charge is use in the plastic lense.

Only in white lense mooring fixture a white led bulb can be use securely because there is no difference in light absorbtion .

Led bulb can be used in red and green fixture securely if the bulb manufacturer suplly a ligthing test ( preferarably realized by an independant european lab ) showing that for each manufacturer colored lenses ( Hella, Aquasignal, Ocullati, Trem, Lazilas , .. ) the color and intensity of light is in the International Martime organiation Colreg specifications ( EN 14744 is european translation ).

With a 5 W bulb to cope with these attenuation problem, the EMI emission are obviously higher . But limits given by EN norms are lower because the navigation fixture can be positionned on the mast top, only a few centimers away from the VHF and AIS antenna .