Standard Compliance and Quality Assurance of Lighting Products : Creating a setup for measuring Short Term Flicker Perceptibility and Stroboscopic Visibility Measure

Abstract: New EU regulations are currently taking effect, which means there will be stricter requirements on lighting units and more necessity for labs to perform photometric quality control. In the project a flickermeter setup was constructed at the Swedish Energy Agency's lab for performing quality assurance of luminaries by measuring the relevant metrics PST, SVM, and ITHD. By accomplishing this in accordance with the relevant IEC Standards, it creates an example setup which can be reproduced in other labs without the need for expensive nontransparent commercial devices. The project also examines the viability of creating such a setup from scratch without prior expertise, using the IEC Standards as a guide. To ensure the reliability of our setup multiple verifications were performed in accordance with the IEC Standards. Most gave positive results, but some issues were also discovered, mainly in regards to the optical filter needed for the setup. A suitable replacement for the missing optical filter was introduced, with which good results were acquired for both SVM and PST when compared to commercial flickermeters. Good results were also acquired in regards to the effects of dimming and the ITHD measured. Aside from the results, some issues regarding the procedures used for quantifying flicker were raised and discussed, along with discussing inconsistencies and discrepancies in the standards used.