A new report from the 4E SSL Annex provides detailed results of tests conducted by laboratories in the US, Europe, Japan and China designed to assess their capability to test a set of LED products accurately and to ascertain whether the test standards and samples selected were adequate for making that assessment.

This testing scheme was designed as a star-type format, and relied on comparing the test results of each of the three laboratories against the test results of the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). Three sets of test lamps were measured by NIST and then sent to each of the three laboratories (VSL, NLTC and AIST). The test samples were measured and then returned to NIST, who conducted a second measurement on each test set. The second test by NIST marked the end of the testing cycle and the start of the data analysis phase.

The report summarises the test results from the nucleus laboratories which confirmed the competence of these laboratories to make repeatable, reproducible and representative measurements of LED lighting products.  The next phase of the IEA 4E SSL Annex’s testing program will be for these nucleus laboratories to evaluate the test method, and provide an inter-laboratory comparison that will generate the objective evidence to support the assessment of the LED product measurement capability in over one hundred lighting laboratories around the world.