In these trying economic times, who couldn’t use an extra $10 million?
If you’re good with lighting, you might want to try and win the L Prize, the Department of Energy’s competition to create a new generation of light bulbs.
The money (it could be less depending on financing) will go to the company that creates a viable solid-state LED replacement for the standard 60-watt incandescent bulb (a second prize will be awarded for a replacement for a PAR 38 halogen reflector lamp).
Announced last May, the contest holds winners to rigorous criteria. In the the case of the standard bulb, it must produce light equivalent to 60 watts but use less than 10 watts and last longer than 25,000 hours (with four hours a day of use, that’s equivalent to more than 17 years), among other requirements. The halogen replacement will need to create the equivalent of 60 watts of light but use less than 11 watts.
If LED lighting eventually takes off, this could be a big deal. According to the Department of Energy, if every socket in the United States that now had a 60-watt bulb switched to an LED equivalent, the country would save 34 terawatt-hours of electricity a year, or enough to light Las Vegas for two years (no jokes about whether it might be better to keep it dark).
While not a requirement, the guidelines also call for the standard bulb replacement to cost no more than $8 by the third year that it’s on the market.
The winning product will be heavily promoted by various utilities around the country, might be included in TV ads and will automatically qualify for Energy Star status. The winning company has to make at least 250,000 units the first year, and the production of the LED chip must occur in the United States, according to a speaker at a Department of Energy Webinar Tuesday.
Through October, New Yorkers can get a sense of LED lighting at the Museum of Modern Art’s Cellophane House, a 2,000-square-foot prototype home now on display at the museum as part of the exhibition, “Home Delivery: Fabricating the Modern Dwelling.” Using only Philips LED lamps and fixtures for illumination, energy savings average 25 percent, but would have been higher if the lighting designers did not decide to illuminate the roof with colored LED lamps.
LED replacement bulbs currently exist, but at around $80-100 each, they’re not likely to be on the shopping list of most consumers this Christmas. For the last few weeks, I’ve been testing two: one is the equivalent of a PAR 30 60-watt halogen reflector lamp (the kind of lamp you see in recessed ceilings that is used to project light downwards) and the other is an LED version of a standard 40-watt light bulb.
The reflector uses 6 watts and its light output does the job, shining down on a kitchen counter and creating for all intents and purposes, just about the same color as its neighboring standard halogen version. No one who’s looked at the light output can tell the difference.
The incandescent bulb replacement still needs some work. The 40-watt equivalent uses just 4 watts, and is said to last 50,000 hours or 35 years (I’m putting this bulb in my will). But the color of the light, while described as “warm,” is still whiter than a standard bulb.
Right now, one of the big problems in the nascent LED business is quality. Simply put, there’s a lot of junk out there, apparent even to an amateur taking a casual look at the construction of some of these units. The L Prize will also set manufacturing standards, which should weed out the stuff that would otherwise give the technology a bad name. As one Webinar speaker said Tuesday, “When it comes to LED lighting, quality is key.”