NEMA Reworks A-line Shipments Index as LEDs Take Over

LEDs continue to take over the market for A-line lamps, according to the latest report on lamp shipments from the National Electrical Manufacturers Association (NEMA), Rosslyn, VA.

LED A-line lamp shipments increased 27% in the third quarter of 2018 compared to 2Q 2018 and leapt 30.6% compared to 3Q 2017. Halogen A-line lamps posted a small increase in shipments in 3Q 2018 compared to the previous quarter (1.7%), but lost ground compared to the same quarter a year ago, down 16.8%. Compact fluorescent lamp (CFL) A-line shipments lost even more ground, slipping 2.3% compared to 2Q 2018 and 17.3% from 3Q 2017 levels.

LED A-line lamps now account for 65.1% of the consumer lamp market, followed by halogen A-line lamps at 28.1% and CFLs holding the remaining 6.7% share, NEMA reported.

NEMA has reworked its A-line lamp reports to incorporate newly available A-line LED data, the association said this week.

When the A-line Lamp Index was first developed and published in 2012, it was designed to measure the shift in general service (A-line) lamp technology as a result of the implementation of the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 (EISA-2007), which required manufacturers to replace traditional incandescent lamp technology with halogen incandescent lamp technology that consumed 28% less energy. At the time, the only other general service lamp technology in the market to any significant degree was the CFL; the general service LED lamp was barely a blip in the market in 2012 when first introduced at retail for $60 per bulb, NEMA said in a post explaining the change in its report.

By the end of 2015, traditional incandescent lamps were virtually gone from store shelves and manufacturers were no longer shipping those lamps as a result of EISA-2007.  The price of general service LED lamps had fallen considerably and consumer demand for that lamp started picking up for the first time.

Over the past two years, as A-line LEDs grew in share of market, NEMA realized that the reported LED lamp shipments significantly understated the actual share of LED lamp shipments because a significant volume of non-NEMA-Member imports of A-line LED lamps was not reflected in the Index. In 2017, the U.S. Government began reporting A-line LED lamp imports for domestic consumption for the first time and this information, along with other information, has enabled NEMA to better measure domestic A-line LED shipments.

In addition to adjusting for the newly available LED data, NEMA has discontinued reporting of Incandescent A-line lamps in the Lamp Index. After about 2015, incandescent A-line lamps had essentially left the “general service” applications and only low lumen and specialty lamps remained.

NEMA has now revised its Lamp Index to begin with the year 2017 when additional data became available and now reflects more closely what consumers see on store shelves.