CoverStory
Timeguard thinks outside the box
control LED and CFL lighting as the small current required to power the switches in standby causes glow and flicker in low energy lighting. Designers have been stumped trying to
C
redesign the switches to eliminate the problem and so we decided to think outside the box and this month, we’re unveiling our patent- protected solution – the ZV900 Automatic Switch Load Controller. Perhaps, best of all for
ounter staff will be all too familiar with the ‘problems’ installers have when using smart switches to
your stock planning, it works with and can be retrofitted with nearly all makes of smart switch. You only have to look on the internet forums
to see electricians desperately trying to find answers to the same problems with LED lighting: more often than not they have suffered the problem of replacing a customer’s old incandescent lamps for new energy saving LED lamps only to find that the damn things will not switch off. No matter what you do they just glow or flash. Or the customer asked for an automatic light switch (PIR, timed, delay, or Photocell, etc) to be fitted to their state of the art LED lighting
Advertorial
Automatic Switch Load Controller eliminates glow and flicker when using smart switches to control low energy lighting.
By Andy Douglas, Managing Director,
Timeguard
The Timeguard ZV900 is designed to alleviate issues with switching LEDs and CFL lamps without extensive extra wiring – and in most cases, no extra wiring at all.
installation, only to find the automatic switch has stopped working after a week.
What’s causing the problems? The main reason we all want to use LED lighting is to save energy as LED lamps use a fraction of the power of incandescent or halogen, so quite logically, they only need a fraction of the power for them to illuminate. So any small voltage/current within the circuit will cause the LED lamps to glow or flash – just the sort of current that is always present in the case of most 2-wire automatic switches offering PIR switching, timing, delay or remote control. Most of these automatic switches are
designed to operate as a replacement for a standard 2-wire light switch where there is normally no neutral connection available at the switch. On the face of it, that’s good news and an easy install for you, but for these switches to function a small amount of power is drawn down through the switched live connection to operate the switch whilst in standby. That was never a problem for incandescent or halogen because the current was too small to have any effect, but it has emerged as a big problem with LED lighting. Another common problem arises when LEDs
are switched on: due to the circuitry needed to power the actual LED chips a momentary
10 | electrical wholesaler May 2016
www.ewnews.co.uk
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60
