Department of Energy Awards Philips for Innovative LED

Sept. 20 Update: The Alliance soon will provide a toolkit designed to educate retailers and utilities  – and their customers  – about the lighting changes taking place across the United States. Stay tuned to ase.org/lighting-info.

Alliance Associate Philips Lighting North America has won the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s prestigious L Prize for coming up with a 10-watt light emitting diode (LED) that is as bright as a traditional 60-watt incandescent bulb. The winning LED fits into sockets, offers a warm glow and diffuses light like a traditional incandescent but is nearly 85% more energy efficient.

The award in the replacement bulb category of the Bright Tomorrow Lighting Prize (L-Prize) competition was presented to Philips executives by U.S. Sens. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) – both honorary vice-chairs of the Alliance Board – at an Aug. 3 Capitol Hill event. Murkowski likened the competition to a high school science fair, stating that winning innovations will “energize and excite young people to create technological advancements that will help our nation.”

• Photo Caption: Philips CEO Ed Crawford accepts the L-Prize.

Philips Exec Dubs Long-Lived LED a ‘Home Appliance’

The new, 10-watt LED – which has a brightness of more than 900 lumens and provides a wide light, unlike the focused beams common to some LEDs – is expected to arrive in stores in 2012. Given these factors and the bulb’s 25-year lifespan, Philips CEO Ed Crawford said the company’s highly efficient LED is really a home appliance – not a disposable product like the bulb it will replace. 

“It’s important to see innovative bulbs as more of an appliance than your standard light bulb,” said Crawford, noting that consumers are used to paying a bit more up front for energy-efficient appliances that will then save money on energy costs over their lifetimes. 

Those savings make the American people “the ultimate winners of the L Prize,” said Zia Eftekhar, CEO, Philips North America Professional Luminaires Business.

As an LED, the light bulb does not contain electrical filaments, plasma or gas and has a lifespan of about 25,000 hours (nearly three years continuously). At that rate, “you won’t have to replace the bulb until the 2036 elections!” Eftehkar declared.

The Win-Win-Win of Energy Efficiency

DOE has estimated that if every conventional 60-watt bulb in the country were replaced with the new LED, the savings could reach $3.9 billion annually by cutting electricity use by about 35 terawatt-hours, while reducing carbon emissions by 20 million metric tons.

The 10-watt LEDs – whose brightness is measured in more than 900 lumens – will not clog landfills like today’s short-lived bulbs, Crawford added.

New jobs for American workers will also result. “With our various plants in Texas and Wisconsin, our innovation in lighting will create jobs,” noted Eftekhar.

Field Testing, Promotion

Thirty-one utilities and energy-efficiency organizations nationwide have signed up to be L Prize partners that will work with DOE to promote the winning product. Fourteen of the partners that field tested the Philips entry in a variety of fixture types in real-world residential and commercial settings found that the lamps had the right amount and color of light, among other factors. 

The Philips lamps also withstood stress testing by an independent laboratory, including extremes of temperature and voltage, humidity, vibration and various electrical waveform distortions.

The L-Prize

Initiated by the Department of Energy in 2008 under a provision of the Energy Security and Independence Act of 2007, the L Prize challenged the lighting industry to redesign one of the most widely used bulbs – the traditional 60-watt incandescent, which represents about half of the U.S. incandescent light bulb market – to use fewer than 10 watts of power, reaching an energy savings of 83%. The L-Prize comes with a $10 million cash award – an amount exceeded by Philips’ investment in development of its 10-watt LED.

The objective of the L-Prize is to create new lighting options to reduce the country’s energy use, create U.S.-based manufacturing jobs and save money for American families and business owners.