L Prize A-Lamp Laboratory Assessment

The DOE hosted the L Prize competition to encourage manufacturers to develop efficient Solid State Lighting (SSL) equivalents to incandescent lighting technologies. One category in the competition is the 60-Watt incandescent lamp. This lab evaluation sought to independently test and analyze the performance characteristics of the first entry to the 60- Watt incandescent lamp category for the L Prize competition. SSL technologies which comply with the performance specifications in the L Prize competition meet rigorous efficiency levels (10 Watts, 900 lumens, 2700K Correlated Color Temp, 90% Color Rendering Index) while maintaining a consistent level of lighting performance seen in baseline technologies. A sample set of SSL lamps from a concurrent field test were selected for evaluation. Several key parameters used in quantifying performance were efficacy, power, luminous flux, correlated color temperature, color rendering index, and power factor. Performance was measured with a set of lamps directly before, and after field-testing. Performance was also measured in a sample set of baseline incandescent and compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs), chosen from commonly available models. Performance was also measured with the L Prize lamps paired to an appropriate dimmer at several prescribed slider/knob positions (0%, 25%, 50%, 75%, and 100%). One lamp per technology was tested with dimming. The SSL lamp was paired with an Electronic Low Voltage (ELV) dimmer as per manufacturer recommendations, while the CFL and incandescent lamps were paired with typical in-line dimmers. The SSL product’s measured performance in several key parameters showed that it seemed to fall in line with the rigorous L Prize specifications. Relative to SSL product lifetime, field-testing run hours were not long enough to show significant performance variations. The highest variation, seen in Luminous Flux, was marginal at best. Surprisingly, this showed a marginal increase on average of 2.61%.