High quality LEDs and control gear
The quality of the assembled components is decisive for the reliability and quality of light with downlights. ERCO primarily uses LEDs with specification L90/B10 50,000h. This means that up to 50,000 hours at least 90% of the LEDs still maintain 90% of their original luminous flux. The remaining 10% of the LEDs do not fail but still have up to 89% of their original luminous flux. The failure rate of the LEDs used by ERCO is on average less than 0.1% up to 50,000 hours. This guarantees continuously low-maintenance operation of the downlights. The colour tolerance is <2 SDCM (Standard Deviation of Colour Matching). This is the highest standard currently available in the market. In-house developed ERCO control gear ensure uniform dimming behaviour and flicker-free light for film recording.
Outstanding visual comfort: no direct glare
A high shielding angle avoids direct glare, in this way contributing to high visual comfort. The light emission surface cannot be seen due to the good shielding. The shielding angle is often called the "cut-off", and with ERCO downlights is always at least 30%.
Outstanding visual comfort: no reflected glare
As well as direct glare via the light emission surface, avoidance of indirect glare caused by reflections is an important visual comfort aspect with downlights. The contour of darklight reflectors specifically avoids reflected glare within the shielding range. In these cases the shielding angle of the light emission surface and the cut-off angle are identical.
Wide luminaire spacing
A particular challenge with downlights is to combine a wide halfpeak divergence with a high cut-off. Wide halfpeak divergences are the precondition for economical lighting concepts with wide distances between luminaires. The ERCO downlight characteristics extra wide flood and oval wide flood feature halfpeak divergence of up to 85° and a 40° cut-off for high visual comfort.
Light distribution
The halfpeak divergence can be read at a glance on the polar diagram for light distribution forming part of the documentation of any ERCO downlight. The halfpeak divergence corresponds to the beam angle, i.e. the angle of light distribution, at half of maximum light intensity.
