LED driver lifespan
There are many factors that can affect the life of your LED driver, including:
The quality of the LED driver.
The model of LED driver is selected.
Installation Environment.
The quality of the LED driver
Frankly speaking, what you get is what you pay for. If you buy a cheap LED driver, its lifespan may not be that long. These low-cost LED drivers are commonly used in the retail market, where low prices are one of the highest decision-making factors for end users. They are not manufactured to the highest standards because they can be expensive, which makes them too expensive to sell in certain retail stores.
MEANWELL LED driver has a long service life. The product data sheet you can download from their website even lists mean time between failure (MTBF) data. This is why MEAN WELL is the first choice in commercial and industrial applications.
It is expected that installers of commercial and industrial applications will provide adequate warranty periods, sometimes as long as 10 years. If a failure occurs, the installer is expected to go to the site and replace the failed LED driver.
Selected LED driver model
It is essential that the actual model of the selected LED driver must be suitable for the purpose.
You can use an LED driver with a higher power rating than the power required to power the LED, but you cannot use a driver with a lower power rating. This will cause the LED driver to be overloaded, thereby severely shortening the life of the LED driver.
For safety, we recommend that you only load the LED driver to 75%~80% of its rated power output.
Environment for installing the LED driver
If you use the LED driver outdoors, please make sure it has a sufficient degree of protection (IP). IP65 should be the absolute minimum, but IP67 is the first choice. The IP rating indicates the dust and moisture resistance provided by the LED driver.
Also check the operating temperature of the LED driver. This will be stated in the product data sheet. You want to make sure that the LED driver is designed to work at the expected temperature.
The data sheet will also show the derating curve. As with most electronic devices, an increase in LED driver temperature will reduce efficiency. If you want to use the LED driver in a hot environment, check the derating curve to ensure that the required load can still be drawn from the LED driver at higher temperatures. If not, you need to choose an LED driver with a higher power rating than expected.
