Philips Claims DOE’s L-Prize for LED Lamp

In what can be seen as both a milestone technological accomplishment and a starting point for LED lighting in general-use applications, Philips Lighting North America last week was awarded the U.S. Department of Energy’s Bright Tomorrow Lighting Prize (aka the “L-Prize”). Philips won $10 million for being the first manufacturer to meet DOE’s criteria for a solid-state lamp that qualifies as a high-efficiency replacement for the 60W incandescent lamp.

With the win, the Somerset, N.J.-based lighting division of Dutch electronics giant Philips lays claim to one of the leading edges in the campaign to produce general-purpose LED lighting technology. The L-Prize, established by Congress in the Energy Security and Independence Act of 2007 (EISA), set goals for efficiency, color rendering, useful life and other parameters to promote the development and U.S. manufacture of the next generation of lighting.

“The winning Philips product excelled through rigorous short-term and long-term performance testing carried out by independent laboratories and field assessments conducted with utilities and other partners,” said a DOE press release announcing the award. “The product also performed exceedingly well through a series of stress tests, in which the product was subjected to extreme conditions such as high and low temperatures, humidity, vibration, high and low voltage and various electrical waveform distortions.”

Philips has not yet named the new lamp, for now calling it the L-Prize Lamp, but it will probably join the company’s existing EnduraLED or AmbientLED lines, said Silvie Casanova, spokesperson for Philips Lighting North America. Full production of the lamp is expected to begin at the end of this year for availability in early 2012, she said.

With a four pack of 60W incandescent lamps currently selling on Home Depot’s website for $1.27 and some LED replacements now retailing for as high as $40, shoppers will obviously have some pricing concerns. But the market is massive — DOE estimates that the national installed stock of 60W A-19 lamps in 2010 as approximately 971 million, and said if every socket in the U.S. converted their 60W incandescent lamps to the 10W L Prize winner, the country would save approximately 35 terawatt-hours of electricity in one year, — enough electricity to power the lights of nearly 18 million U.S. households, or nearly triple the annual electricity consumption of Washington, D.C.

No doubt the $10 million prize is a nice bit of additional cash for Philips (which reported 2010 sales of €25.4 billion or about $36 billion by today’s exchange rates), but the real prize is the buzz and bragging rights that come with being the first to meet the qualifications of DOE’s testing program. The prize entitles Philips to participate in marketing and promotional campaigns with 31 L-Prize efficiency partners, including utilities, that have committed to helping develop the market for the winning product.

Philips was the first manufacturer to submit a batch of 2,000 lamps to DOE for the 18-month battery of evaluation and testing. DOE said it has also received letters of intent from Lighting Science Group and GE Lighting to enter the 60W-replacement category, and has subsequently closed the competition to new entries in this category. In each category, the first entrant to successfully meet the full competition requirements receives the cash prize. Up to two additional entrants may be eligible for program partner promotions, according to DOE’s website.

Philips’ win didn’t dissuade one competing LED manufacturer from touting its own success with LED R&D. Two days ahead of the August 3 announcement from the DOE, Cree Inc., Durham, N.C., issued a press release and a YouTube video claiming that it has a prototype lamp that exceeds the performance specification for a different DOE lamp competition category, the 21st Century Lamp, the third category in the L Prize competition. According to the Cree press announcement, its new LED lamp delivers more than 1,300 lumens at 152 lumens per watt (LPW). Information on DOE’s website says the L Prize competition calls for the development of a “21st Century Lamp” that delivers more than 150 lumens per watt (lm/W), much more than the 90 lm/W required for the 60-watt bulb replacement and the 123 lm/W required for the PAR 38 replacement.

Gerry Negley, Cree LED lighting chief technology officer and co-inventor of the Cree TrueWhite Technology used in the new lamp, said in the press release, “Cree’s concept lamp is a far cry from its 20th century counterparts. No one has fully envisioned what the lighting of the future will look like, which allows Cree to continue to innovate without constraint.”

Neal Hunter, Cree co-founder, added in that press release, “Not long ago, fixture efficacy of 100-plus lumens per watt was impossible, but Cree is shipping fixtures at 110 LPW today. We calculate that if fully deployed, LED lighting at 150 LPW could bring a 16.5 percent reduction in the nation’s electric energy consumption, returning it to 1987 levels.”

Cree said third-party testing by independent lab OnSpeX confirmed that its lamp delivered more than 1,330 lumens and consumes only 8.7W, and that the lamp delivers a high-quality, energy-efficient light with a CRI of 91 at a warm white color of 2,800K. The company also said this R&D project benefits from technology developed under DOE-funded contracts, which are part of its ongoing collaboration with DOE to advance the successful adoption of energy-saving solid-state lighting.

The DOE L-Prize also includes a competition for creation of a solid-state replacement for the PAR 38 incandescent reflector lamp. To date, DOE has not announced that any manufacturers have entered PAR 38 equivalents, and earlier this year that competition was closed for reevaluation of testing criteria based on lessons learned in the 60W competition.