Experimental study of the response of efficient lighting technologies to complex voltage fluctuations

The replacement of incandescent lamps with more energy-efficient lighting technologies has a direct influence on the way flicker is measured. The International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) established in the 61000-4-15 standard the functional specifications of a flickermeter, taking a standard incandescent lamp's response to voltage fluctuations as the reference. During the past ten years, different works have studied the sensitivity of modern lamps to analytical voltage fluctuations of low complexity. From these studies, the most widespread conclusion is that modern lamps are less sensitive to flicker than are incandescent lamps. Based on these results, international standardization organizations are currently studying two different possibilities for updating the flicker assessment procedure: adjusting the IEC flickermeter according to a new less sensitive reference lamp, or increasing the established compatibility levels for voltage fluctuations. This work presents for the first time a sensitivity analysis of a set of modern lamps subjected to real voltage signals that are more complex than analytical voltage fluctuations. The obtained results lead to the following conclusions: not all efficient lamps have a lower sensitivity to fluctuations than do incandescent lamps; the response of some lamps depends on the complexity of the input voltage fluctuation; and the response of some lamps in real scenarios, i.e., more complex voltage fluctuations, does not correlate with their response to simple voltage fluctuations.