# LED protection



## Robha1 (May 23, 2017)

I have about 20 250w high bay fixtures in a chiller building 

recently I have replaced two of the fixtures with direct wire LED retro fit bulbs

last month we had a short outage and both bulbs fried

all the old fixtures re lit with no problem 

we are wanting to eventually change the rest of them out to LED

My question is :

is it better to put fuse protection on each individual light or is there a way

to protect the whole circuit at once from a more convenient location to 

where I can easily change fuses without having to climb/set up ladders 

over pumps/equipment ect??

has anyone else a situation like this??
any thoughts or ideas would be appreciated

Thanks 
RobH


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## macmikeman (Jan 23, 2007)

You could try calling a licensed electrical contractor to come in and install surge protection for your facility.


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## sbrn33 (Mar 15, 2007)

macmikeman said:


> You could try calling a licensed electrical contractor to come in and install surge protection for your facility.


Or use real fixtures and not relay on cheap retrofits.


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## joebanana (Dec 21, 2010)

Sounds as if you had more than a "short outage", maybe some spikage too. If an outage were the case, the LED fixtures/bulbs should have survived. Did you replace the fixture, or the lamp's? A decent fixture would have built-in protection. I would do some research into better fixtures/bulbs, or different manufacturer before trying to rig something that may be on the grey side of the code.


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## mitch65 (Mar 26, 2015)

Surge protection on the panel feeding the lights should protect them. Call the Retrofit lamp manufacturer and see what they recommend. If they have no answers, demand warranty replacement on the lamps that failed, then install surge protection.


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## Robha1 (May 23, 2017)

*LED v*

Thanks for all the advice

It seems like these issues are not uncommon with this new LED technology

panel surge protection looks like the best way to go

Thanks again for all the advice


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## goodtimesgladly (Sep 12, 2017)

You did not specify the manufacturer of the LED. If it were a cheap China replacement then get used to failure and not only because of power outages or surges. All the previous posts are correct. There are more cheap LED Manufacturers and fixtures than you can shake a stick at and all the circuit protection in he world will not protect them. Personally I have surge protection on everything cause spikes come from all directions. LED is the not only the future but now. LED lighting has three requiremets. Protection! Protection! Protection!


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## frenchelectrican (Mar 15, 2007)

The thing I been wondering what voltage the LEDs that you are running now?

120 or 277 volts ? if latter part some of those leds can not handle anything over 300 volts and they will fry pretty fast due the voltage surge.

The voltage dip those luminaires can handle the dip pretty easy but surge that is different story., 

A poor quality conversion kit will cause a lot of headache on this.

I have ran into this semi often due my area ., I get a bit of voltage swings.
( my area is on 240 volts line to neutral ) 

The other thing is that if you have Multiwire branch circuit this you will have to be just be more carefull with this especially on neutral conductor., if you have weak or bad connection on neutral conductor that can fry up some of electronic driver or ballast.


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## Helmut (May 7, 2014)

Typically most new LED fixtures come with surge protection built into them. It is either incorporated into the driver, or is external to the driver wrapped in heatshrink.

For a chiller building, you should of spec'd out induction lights instead of LED.

They pretty much made for that application.


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## telsa (May 22, 2015)

The easy-to-swap LED schemes place the solid state power conversion devices inside the unit, itself.

They are most unlikely to be designed to tolerate the harsh conditions of a chill room.

Condensation

Thermal stresses

You want stuff that's rated for this duty. Don't figure it to be cheap, cheap, cheap.


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## Electrical-EE (May 4, 2017)

As far as I think you should call some registered contractor in this scenario.


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## Electrical-EE (May 4, 2017)

*Good advice*



goodtimesgladly said:


> You did not specify the manufacturer of the LED. If it were a cheap China replacement then get used to failure and not only because of power outages or surges. All the previous posts are correct. There are more cheap LED Manufacturers and fixtures than you can shake a stick at and all the circuit protection in he world will not protect them. Personally I have surge protection on everything cause spikes come from all directions. LED is the not only the future but now. LED lighting has three requiremets. Protection! Protection! Protection!


This man saying something that weights. Pay attention.


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## max-8988 (Nov 3, 2017)

Putting the fuse in each bulb might not be practical as it increase your cost and actually it is time consuming. Instead, you can connect them in parallel.


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