To dramatically move America from its less efficient, dated lighting to a more energy efficient, innovative solution, the U.S. Department of Energy opened the Bright Tomorrow Lighting Prize, L Prize®, competition to lighting manufacturers in 2009. One of the goals was to spur development of a high quality, high-efficiency alternative to the 60-watt incandescent light bulb, which is one of the most widely used lighting in America with an estimated 971 million sockets still in use.
Philips Lighting North America was awarded the L Prize for its highly efficient LED 10-watt bulb. The product utilizes blue and red LEDs and remote yellow phosphors to create a diffuse, warm white light, similar to what consumers are used to seeing in their homes. It produces 940 lumens, a 17 percent increase in light as compared to a standard 60-watt incandescent that emits 800 lumens.
The Philips LED has an average life of 30,000 hours, which is 30 times longer than its standard incandescent counterpart, and has dimming capability.
The DOE competition specified stringent requirements for quality and manufacturing, and performance requirements for efficacy, light output, wattage, color rendering, color temperature, form factor and dimming capabilities. Essentially, the new product had to act like a traditional incandescent bulb, but consume less than 20 percent of the energy.
View a list of distributors currently stocking the LED bulb on the Philips website. Information on the competition can be found at www.lightingprize.org.