The U.S. Department of Energy today announced that Philips Lighting North America has won the 60W replacement bulb category of the Bright Tomorrow Lighting Prize (L Prize) competition. The L Prize challenged the lighting industry to develop high performance, energy-saving replacements for conventional light bulbs that will save American consumers and businesses money.
Submitted in 2009, the Philips LED bulb successfully completed 18 months of intensive field, lab, and product testing to meet the rigorous requirements of the L Prize competition–ensuring that performance, quality, lifetime, cost and availability meet expectations for widespread adoption and mass manufacturing.
If every 60W incandescent bulb in the U.S. was replaced with the 10W L Prize winner, the nation would save about 35 TW-hours of electricity or $3.9 billion in one year and avoid 20 million metric tons of carbon emissions.
“We looked at the L Prize challenge as an opportunity to innovate and develop an energy efficient alternative to a product that has remained largely unchanged for over a century,” said Zia Eftekhar, CEO of Philips Lighting North America. “The fact that we are the first and only company capable of submitting a product and completing 18 months of rigorous testing not only underscores our commitment to innovation and quality, it highlights our ability to bring meaningful leading technologies into the mainstream.”
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. The product also performed 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. The Philips L Prize winning product was also required to have a useful lifetime of more than 25,000 hours.
As the winner, Philips will receive a $10 million cash prize as well as L Prize partner promotions and incentives. To date, 31 utilities and energy efficiency program partners stand ready to promote and develop markets for the winning product. The L Prize-winning 60-watt equivalent LED bulb from Philips could arrive in stores as soon as early 2012.
Congratulations, Philips!
