Evaluating the standby power consumption of smart LED bulbs

There is an increasing demand for smart devices in recent years. One of the latest additions to the long list of these smart devices is the smart light-emitting diode (LED) light sources. They offer many additional features in addition to provide light. However, like all other smart devices, when they are turned off by the user through a smart device, they still consume energy. That standby power consumption, when the bulbs are off, soon becomes an increasing load to the grid. In this study, we investigated the current smart residential LED bulb market and selected three samples from 30 models that are available to Canadian consumers. We tested the standby power consumption of those samples by following the IEC 62301 standard. The results showed that the standby power consumption of 21 Smart LED bulb models (out of 30) was less than 0.5W, which resembles the maximum allowable standby power consumption amount of a smart LED bulb, if the manufacturers intend to carry the Energy Star logo on their product. Although most products are not Energy Star rated, it is a promising result. xWe also found that the standby power consumption of the three bulb samples tested for each model was generally consistent (the standard deviation was less than 0.02). Only three models had one sample measured with a higher or lower consumption than the other two samples (highest difference 0.43W, lowest difference: 0.06W, standard deviation higher than 0.03). This internal consistency or standby power consumption amount in between samples are worrisome. Although our sample size was small, we believe that the findings from our study enabled to gather enough information to have a basic idea about the status of current standby power consumption of the smart LED bulbs in Canadian residential market Crown Copyright (C) 2019 Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.