LED troubleshooting tidbit

[steveparrott]

An installer was troubled to find that a wire run with numerous LED fixtures was tripping the secondary breaker (retrofit LED MR-16's were used).

After spending a lot of time troubleshooting the problem, he found one LED was the culprit. When he removed that one lamp, all the others went back on and the breaker didn't trip.

It turned out that the LED had failed and its components shorted out - creating a dead short for the entire wire run.

As we know, when incandescents fail, the result is always an open circuit, causing no problems (except for a voltage bump) to the other fixtures. LED's can go either way - they can short and take down an entire system. Not that this is common, but it does happen.

[The Lighting Geek]

I have had that happen though not very often. No matter how much of a system goes down, ie: one lamp, string or whole system, my clients call me right away.

It has been our policy to get to a client with 24 hours with a crew. It is a PITA no matter how it happens, but we respond quickly with our TRU, or Tactical Response Unit, and take care of business. I get more business from the way we handle issues and how we take care of our clients. Now I will say no one likes problems and my crew and I worked very hard to prevent them.
I have a fraction of the failures in Kichler, Halco or Brilliant LEDs compared to the premature failures of lamps out of the box. Right now it is about 1 in 1000 units, while my halogen failures were 1 in 100-200.

I know this is a little off topic, but many forget the power of good service after the sale. It is what separates the best from mediocrity.