This application claims priority to Chinese Patent Application Serial No. 201410457926.3, which was filed Sep. 10, 2014, and is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety.
Various embodiments generally relate to the field of illumination, and particularly to an LED lamp device.
In daily life, fluorescent lamps are conventional light sources, which have been used widely. Most of illumination devices use the fluorescent lamps as light sources.
In recent years, however, LED (light-emitting diode) light emission technology has developed fast. Since LED lamps have relatively high efficiency and relatively long lifetime, a tendency of gradually replacing the fluorescent lamps with the LED lamps arises. To emit light having the same brightness, an LED lamp consumes less energy than a fluorescent lamp. That is, the LED lamps have higher light emission efficiency than the fluorescent lamps. Moreover, with the development of the LED light emission technology, the lifetime of the LED lamps has reached a satisfactory degree, and even can exceed that of general fluorescent lamps. In addition, the cost of manufacturing the LED lamps is decreasing gradually. Therefore, more and more fluorescent lamps will be replaced with the LED lamps in the future, so as to save energy sources.
Due to the inherent electrical and optical characteristics of the fluorescent lamps, in most of the existing circuits using a fluorescent lamp to emit light, an electronic ballast (ECG) is used as a component connected between an AC power supply and a fluorescent lamp. For example, in the case of using a self-resonance electronic ballast, the self-resonance electronic ballast may generate an instant high voltage (e.g., 1000V or higher) during startup, such that the fluorescent lamp can be broken-down ionizedly in order to emit light. After the ionization breakdown of the fluorescent lamp, the operating voltage of the fluorescent lamp reduces to and maintains at a proper voltage value, so as to emit light continuously.
For the LED lamps, however, since the light emission principle of the LED lamps differs from that of the fluorescent lamps, the instant high voltage is not needed for startup of the LED lamps. Disadvantageously, an instant high voltage (e.g., 1000V or higher) may damage the LED lamps. Currently, drivers for AC/DC conversion and output power adjustment have been integrated into some LED lamp devices, and such an instant high voltage may also damage the drivers.
To enable an LED lamp device not only to operate normally but also to be free of damages resulting from an instant high voltage in an existing illumination circuit, during replacing an existing fluorescent lamp in the illumination circuit with the LED lamp device, the existing circuit has to be further modified, for example, to uninstall the electronic ballast or to bypass the electronic ballast, so as to disable the electronic ballast. However, these approaches are inconvenient, and increase time and labor cost for upgrading the illumination circuit.
Various embodiments provide an LED lamp device which can replace an existing fluorescent lamp in a conventional illumination circuit, conveniently.
According to various embodiments, an LED lamp device is provided, including: an LED unit for emitting light; a driving unit for driving the LED unit, such that the LED unit emits light at an operating point; and a resonance unit for receiving an input and providing AC power to the driving unit, and protecting the driving unit and the LED unit from being damaged by the input.
According to various embodiments, the presence of the resonance unit can protect the driving unit and the LED unit from being damaged by an input from outside the LED lamp device, while ensuring the LED unit to emit light normally.
In the drawings, like reference characters generally refer to the same parts throughout the different views. The drawings are not necessarily to scale, emphasis instead generally being placed upon illustrating the principles of the invention. In the following description, various embodiments of the invention are described with reference to the following drawings, in which:
Hereinafter, embodiments of the invention will be described in detail with reference to the appended drawings. It should be noted that the following descriptions are exemplary only but do not intend to limit the invention. In addition, in the following descriptions, identical or similar components in different figures will be denoted by identical reference numerals.
Particularly, according to an embodiment of the present disclosure, the LED lamp device 100 is used for replacing the fluorescent lamp in the existing illumination circuit. One function of the electronic ballast 200 in the existing fluorescent lamp light-emitting circuit is to generate an instant high voltage (e.g., 1000V or higher) during startup, such that the fluorescent lamp is broken-down ionizedly in order to emit light. In contrast, the LED unit 110 according to the present disclosure emits light without needing such a high startup voltage, and a relatively high instant voltage may damage the driving unit 120 and/or the LED unit 110. Therefore, the presence of the resonance unit 130 can protect respective components in the driving unit 120 and the LED unit 110 from being damaged by the instant high voltage generated by the electronic ballast 200, such that the LED lamp device 100 is adapted to use the output of the existing electronic ballast 200 to emit light.
Accordingly, in replacing the conventional fluorescent lamp in the illumination circuit with the LED lamp device, the conventional fluorescent lamp may be replaced directly with the LED lamp device according to the present disclosure, without needing any further modification to the existing circuit, i.e. without uninstallation of the existing electronic ballast and without bypass for the existing electronic ballast for disabling the electronic ballast, thereby simplifying operations and reducing the time and labor cost for upgrading the illumination circuit.
As shown in
When the electronic ballast 200 generates an instant high voltage during startup, the oscillation formed by the inductor 131 and the capacitor 132 of the resonance unit 130 can decrease the voltage provided to the driving unit 120 and the LED unit 110 behind the resonance unit 130 so as to protect respective components in the driving unit 120 and the LED unit 110 from being damaged by the output of the electronic ballast 200, such that the LED lamp device 100 can emit light by using the output of the electronic ballast 200.
In addition, during normal operations, the output power of the electronic ballast 200 is greater than the power needed for light emission by the LED unit 100. The series LC circuit composed of the inductor 131 and the capacitor 132 can flow a portion of the power which is not needed by the LED unit 110 back to the electronic ballast 200 in the form of reactive power, so that this portion of energy can be recovered by the electronic ballast 200, thereby improving the efficiency and saving energy sources.
Table 1 shows a measurement result of the total efficiency of a circuit composed of the LED lamp device of the present disclosure and one of different self-resonance electronic ballasts 1-4. In Table 1, Vin, Iin, and Pin represent the voltage, current and power of an input end of the electronic ballast, respectively, PF represents the total power factor of the circuit, and VLED, ILED and PLED represent the voltage across both ends of the LED unit and the current and power of the LED unit, respectively. As can be seen from Table 1, for all of the electronic ballasts, the total efficiency of the circuit is higher than 75% with different voltages input.
According to various embodiments, the inductance value of the inductor 131 and the capacitance value of the capacitor 132 of the resonance unit 130 may cause the resonance unit 130 as a whole to exhibit an inductive impedance when the output of the electronic ballast 200 is provided to the resonance unit 130. According to the electrical characteristic of the existing electronic ballast, it can supply power only to a load which exhibits a pure resistive impedance or an inductive impedance. If the load of the electronic ballast 200 exhibits a capacitive impedance, the electronic ballast 200 will turn off. Therefore, in replacing the conventional fluorescent lamp in the illumination circuit with the LED lamp device according to the present disclosure so as to upgrade the existing illumination circuit, the resonance unit 130 as a whole will exhibit an inductive impedance, so as to simplify operations, reduce cost, and enable the electronic ballast in the existing circuit to supply power normally.
The inductive impedance XL and capacitive impedance XC of the circuit formed by connecting in series the inductor and the capacitor in the resonance unit are as shown in the following formulas (1) and (2):
where L represents the inductance value of the inductor 131, and C represents the capacitance value of the capacitor 132.
Where XL=XC, that is,
the resonance frequency fr of the LC circuit can be calculated as shown in the following formula (3):
Referring to
Preferably, L and C satisfy the following formula (5):
As can be seen from the above formulas, the larger values of L and C, the more probability that the resonance unit 130 as a whole tends to exhibit an inductive impedance when receiving the AC output of the electronic ballast 200. However, the physical sizes of the inductor 131 and the capacitor 132 will be increased with the increase of the values of L and C. In replacing the conventional fluorescent lamp in the illumination circuit with the LED lamp device according to the present disclosure so as to upgrade the existing illumination circuit, the size of the LED lamp device is required to be the same as or similar to that of the existing fluorescent lamp so as to facilitate operations. Those skilled in the art can select the suitable L and C according to the requirements in practice, so as to satisfy the formula (4) or (5) while meeting the requirements in terms of the size of the LED lamp device.
According to various embodiments, the frequency of the output voltage of the electronic ballast in the existing illumination circuit is about 25-70 kHz. Therefore, the inductance value L of the inductor 131 and the capacitance value C of the capacitor 132 of the resonance unit 130 cause the resonance frequency fr of the LC circuit to be less than 25 kHz, preferably less than 20 kHz, and more preferably less than 12.5 kHz.
For the applicability to the output of the electronic ballast 200 as described above, the LED lamp device 100 according to the present disclosure has a resonance unit 130. When the resonance unit 130 is arranged to be connected directly to the AC voltage source, the resonance unit 130 as a whole exhibits a capacitive impedance. Thus, after being connected directly to the AC voltage source, the resonance unit 130 may not influence the electric power provided by the AC voltage source, substantively, such that the output of the AC voltage source almost without being subjected to any conversion can act on the driving unit 120 and the LED unit 110 behind the resonance unit 130, for light emission.
In such a way, the LED lamp device 100 including the resonance unit 130 according to the present disclosure can also be connected directly to an AC voltage source such as civilian or industrial electricity (with a voltage of 220 V or 380 V) for illumination, without an electronic ballast in the existing circuit.
Referring to
Preferably, L and C satisfy the following formula (7):
According to various embodiments, the frequency of the output voltage of the AC voltage source such as civilian or industrial electricity is about 50-60 Hz. Therefore, the inductance value L of the inductor 131 and the capacitance vale C of the capacitor 132 of the resonance unit 130 cause the resonance frequency fr of the LC circuit to be larger than 60 Hz, preferably larger than 100 Hz, and more preferably larger than 120 Hz.
As can be seen from the above formulas (4)-(7), the LED lamp device according to an embodiment of the present disclosure can emit light not only when being connected to an electronic ballast in the existing illumination circuit, but also when being connected directly to an AC voltage source in the absence of an electronic ballast. Thus, the inductance value L of the inductor 131 and the capacitance vale C of the capacitor 132 in the resonance unit 130 of the LED lamp device shall satisfy the following formula (8):
Preferably, L and C satisfy the following formula (9):
Therefore, the LED lamp device according to the embodiment is adapted to emit light not only by using the output of the existing electronic ballast when replacing the conventional fluorescent lamp in the illumination circuit, but also by being connected directly to an AC voltage source in the absence of an electronic ballast in the existing circuit. That is, the LED lamp device according to the embodiment is compatible with both of the electronic ballast and the AC voltage source.
As would be appreciated by those skilled in the art, in the case that the input power of the LED lamp device and the load impedance to the switch mode power supply (i.e. an equivalent impedance of the LED unit) are in a positive change relationship (that is, the input power of the LED lamp device will increase with increase of the load impedance), the switch mode power supply needs to have a positive feedback control loop. On the contrary, in the case that the input power of the LED lamp device and the load impedance to the switch mode power supply are in a negative change relationship (that is, the input power of the LED lamp device will decrease with increase of the load impedance), the switch mode power supply needs to have a negative feedback control loop.
Referring again to
However, a non-self-resonance electronic ballast has an output characteristic different from that of the self-resonance electronic ballast. When the LED lamp device having the resonance unit according to the present disclosure is connected to a non-self-resonance electronic ballast, the input power of the LED lamp device (i.e. the output power of the non-self-resonance electronic ballast) will increase with increase of the equivalent impedance of the LED unit. According to another example of the present disclosure, the switch mode power supply 122 included in the LED lamp device 100 as shown in
While the disclosed embodiments have been particularly shown and described with reference to specific embodiments, it should be understood by those skilled in the art that various changes in form and detail may be made therein without departing from the spirit and scope of the disclosed embodiments as defined by the appended claims. The scope of the disclosed embodiments is thus indicated by the appended claims and all changes which come within the meaning and range of equivalency of the claims are therefore intended to be embraced.
Number | Date | Country | Kind |
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201410457926.3 | Sep 2014 | CN | national |