How to keep business alive in this recession

[AndyD]

Unfortunately the sales were not fantastic, and now have been reduced due to the cheap imports. Many of the low cost imported PSU's fail due to the manner in which they are designed.

There is a new range of PSU devices which are reasonably priced that are able to do the job, and improve the power factor to over 0.97, however if you place the typical noise suppression capacitor that most electrical equipment require to pass the SANAS EMI test, then it drops the power factor to 0.92. For home use this is not an issue as far as SANAS is concerned, but for industry they specify a higher power factor. An interesting issue.

Sorry to hear you had to scale back on them, I thought you'd be on a winner when I first saw your range.

Power factor is a major issue with LED drivers and general switch mode supplies. I came across a large commercial lighting installation a few weeks ago that had a PF less than 0.55. I was appalled.

[Justloadit]

Sorry to hear you had to scale back on them, I thought you'd be on a winner when I first saw your range.

Power factor is a major issue with LED drivers and general switch mode supplies. I came across a large commercial lighting installation a few weeks ago that had a PF less than 0.55. I was appalled.

This is one of the problems with the cheap LED lighting, where the current draw to light up the actual LED elements, only occurs on the upper third of the sine wave, increasing the current spikes and reducing the power factor.

You save on the cost of the LED lamp, but you pay the extra 40% for it every hour in consumption of energy. One should effectively look at the LED light cost being more than what the price tag shows.

I have been noticing these cheap LED lamps available at the super markets fall into that cheap high power factor range, and generally fail with in a year if used for long periods of time. So effectively you replacing the LED lamps as in the old days with incandescent lamps every year or so. I suppose the time becomes a factor in the forgetfulness of when it was last replaced.