GB 30255-2026 Adds a Standby Power Limit: What It Means for Dimmable LED Driver Selection

China has pulled dimmable and tunable-white indoor luminaires into mandatory energy-efficiency regulation, and added a line item nobody used to ask for: standby power. If you specify or import control gear, this lands on you.

What the new standard changes

GB 30255-2026 takes effect on 1 September 2027, replacing GB 30255-2019. Two revisions matter:

• Scope expanded — narrow-beam downlights (spots), LED high-bays, retrofit double-capped LED lamps, and indoor products with dimming, colour-tuning or other added functions now sit inside the efficiency system.
• Standby power added — aimed at the "invisible" draw of products in a non-working state, moving lighting from running efficiency to *all-hours* efficiency.

The cap is quantified: per a public summary published by the Zhejiang Foreign Trade Public Service Platform, a product with a standby mode must not exceed 1.5 W, tested to GB/T 39018. The standard also grants efficiency corrections for high-CRI, anti-glare and smart-control products, so adding dimming will not by itself drop a luminaire a grade.

Why it is a driver number

The standard grades the luminaire, but the standby watts are drawn by the control gear. A dark luminaire is not a dead one:

• DALI gear stays on the bus at 0% brightness; the bus interface, MCU and address memory keep drawing current, or the next addressing cycle drops codes.
• 0-10 V gear shuts the output down at 0 V, but the input rectifier and auxiliary rail still run.
• Triac / phase-cut gear needs holding current to stay latched. That is the price of not dropping out at low load.
• Wireless gear (Bluetooth mesh, ZigBee) must keep the radio listening, or the app cannot find the device.

Scale it: 0.5 W with the lights off 10 hours a day is about 1.8 kWh per driver per year. A commercial job with 200 dimming drivers spends roughly 365 kWh a year on nothing; at the 1.5 W ceiling allowed by GB 30255-2026, about 1,095 kWh. Not one lumen comes out of it.

Which of our models you will be asked about

• H19 — constant-current 10–52 W, 9–48 V, DALI / 0-10 V / Triac (one per build), 8-step dip-switch current selection. Spots are newly in scope, so this is the first model we expect to be asked about.
• K02 (DALI-2 DT6, 12/24 V, 60–400 W) and K03 (DALI DT8 tunable white, 12/24 V, 60–400 W) — the bus-powered case. Low-quiescent control ICs and non-volatile addressing are already our design habit; the next step is publishing the figure.
• H08 (DALI + Push + 0-10 V, 24 V, 36–350 W, IP50) and H09 (DALI + Push, DT8 three-wire tunable white, 24 V, 100–350 W) — both list PF > 0.90 and efficiency above 90%, so running efficiency is fine. The gap is the off-state figure.
• K05 (Mi Bluetooth mesh or Tuya ZigBee, 24 V, 200 W / 400 W) — the worst case, since the radio never sleeps. Only topology and sleep strategy move that number.
• H14 (3C + LVD + EMC, high PF, 12/24 V, 60–400 W) — non-dimming is not exempt. Labelling is a luminaire-level act, and we still supply component data for the filing.

What we are fixing

Our datasheets do not publish standby power yet, and most CV dimming specs on the market do not either. That changes before September 2027: we will measure every model in three states — full load, dimmed to 0%, signal-off — and print all three. If you are filing an energy label, that data has to come from us.

One honest note on H13 (dip-switch dimming, 24 V, 100–600 W, AC 170–277 V): listed at PF 0.5–0.6, fine for simple strip runs and small display jobs. Do not try to pass an efficiency acceptance on that power factor — move to a high-PF unit like H14 instead.

Export jobs, a different yardstick

China's cap is 1.5 W. Under Ecodesign Regulation (EU) 2019/2020, separate control gear is capped at 0.5 W in both no-load and standby. If one platform has to serve domestic and European jobs, design to 0.5 W, not 1.5 W, or you will re-tool twice. For North America, H11 (ETL listed, IP67, 12/24 V, 30–300 W) already has an open certification path.

Three lines for your next RFQ

• Ask for the figure with its condition — no-load, standby or off-mode. A number without a condition is not a specification.
• Budget per system. Half a watt is nothing; half a watt times 300 units times ten years is a line item.
• Demand paperwork — a test report plus a Declaration of Conformity naming product, standard and responsible party. No DoC, treat the claim as unverified.

Standby power now belongs next to power factor and conversion efficiency on a driver datasheet — not because a regulator said so, but because it is electricity you pay for every night.

Questions on a specific project? Call or WhatsApp +86 138 2356 2421 — tell us the model and the market, and we will send the standby measurements we have, plus samples for your own bench test.