LED Lamp Research and development
US Department of Energy
In May 2008 the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced details of the Bright Tomorrow Lighting Prize competition. The L Prize is the first government-sponsored technology competition designed to spur lighting manufacturers to develop high quality, high efficiency solid-state lighting products to replace the common light bulb. The competition will award cash prizes, and may also lead to opportunities for federal purchasing agreements, utility programs, and other incentives for winning products.
The Energy Independence and Security Act (EISA) of 2007 authorizes DOE to establish the Bright Tomorrow Lighting Prize competition. The legislation challenges industry to develop replacement technologies for the most commonly used and inefficient products, 60W incandescent lamps and PAR 38 halogen lamps. The L Prize specifies technical requirements for these two competition categories. Lighting products meeting the competition requirements would consume just 17% of the energy used by most incandescent lamps in use today. A future L Prize program announcement will call for development of a new “21st Century Lamp,” as authorized in the legislation.
The EISA legislation establishes basic requirements and prize amounts for each category. The legislation authorizes up to $20 million in cash prizes. On September 24 2009 the DOE announced that Philips was the first to submit lamps in the catogory to replace the of the standard 60W A-19 “Edison” light bulb.
National Institute of Standards and Technology
In June 2008 scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) announced the first two standards for solid-state lighting in the United States. These standards detail the color specifications of LED lamps and LED light fixtures, and the test methods that manufacturers should use when testing these solid-state lighting products for total light output, energy consumption and chromaticity, or color quality.
The Illuminating Engineering Society of North America (IESNA) published a documentary standard LM-79, which describes the methods for testing solid-state lighting products for their light output (lumens), energy efficiency (lumens per watt) and chromaticity.
The solid-state lights being studied are intended for general illumination, but white lights used today vary greatly in chromaticity, or specific shade of white. The American National Standards Institute (ANSI) published the standard C78.377-2008, which specifies the recommended color ranges for solid-state lighting products using cool to warm white LEDs with various correlated color temperatures. The standard may be downloaded from ANSI’s Web site.
DOE launched the Energy Star program for solid-state lighting products in 2008. NIST scientists assisted DOE by providing research, technical details and comments for the Energy Star specifications. The Energy Star certification assures consumers that products save energy and are high quality and also serves as an incentive for manufacturers to provide energy-saving products for consumers.
Other venues
Philips Lighting has ceased research on compact fluorescents, and is devoting the bulk of its R.& D. budget, 5 percent of the company’s global lighting revenue, to SSL.
In January 2009, it was reported that researchers at Cambridge University had developed an LED bulb that costs £2 (about $3 U.S.), is 12 times as energy efficient as a tungsten bulb, and lasts for 100,000 hours.
In March 2009, C. Crane Company announced the C. Crane Company Geobulb. This lamp was reported to be the most efficient LED lightbulb on the market at the time of its introduction.
In August 2009, Eternaleds Inc. announced the HydraLux-4. This lamp uses liquid-cooling to solve the directional nature of LEDs, giving true omni-directional light, unlike other globe-shaped LED bulbs that utilize a dome on the top half of the bulb and metal heatsink on the bottom half.