Republication of Postings from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Solid-State Lighting Program
by Jim Brodrick, U.S. Department of Energy
Last year was an eventful one for the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Solid-State Lighting Program. It would have been unusual if it wasn’t eventful, considering the speed at which the technology and marketplace are both evolving. As always, DOE’s SSL Program has been evolving too, in order to keep pace and respond to stakeholder feedback.
For example, in 2013 we implemented a number of changes to LED Lighting Facts. Manufacturer partners now have the option to group related products as a family rather than treat each one as a standalone, which means they only have to test a single member of that family and can calculate the performance of the other members based on the representative product. We also started verification testing to ensure that the performance information posted in the LED Lighting Facts database — which now has nearly 12,000 products registered — remains reliable and accurate. In addition, we upgraded the product submission process, and improved the product search tool to make the listed information even more accessible to the growing number of users who’ve come to rely on it.
We also issued new reports in 2013 that are designed to help facilitate the market adoption of energy-efficient SSL products in a variety of ways. One such report is Adoption of Light-Emitting Diodes in Common Lighting Applications, which analyzes markets where LEDs compete with traditional lighting sources and provides estimates of current energy savings, plus potential savings if these markets switched to LEDs overnight. For the nine markets analyzed, 49 million LED lamps and luminaires that were in use in 2012 saved approximately $675 million — a drop in the bucket compared with the estimated $37 billion that would be saved if these markets switched entirely to LEDs overnight.
Another DOE report published in 2013, Residential Lighting End-Use Consumption Study: Estimation Framework and Initial Estimates, presents a framework for the estimation of U.S. lamp usage and energy consumption not only nationally and by region, but also by household characteristics, lamp characteristics, and the particular room within the home. By improving our understanding of residential lighting-energy usage, this study is useful to utilities and others doing energy estimates, and can also help manufacturers design products that maximize energy savings.
In 2013 we also came out with a number of reports on key solid-state lighting issues, to help manufacturers and users effectively address and deal with them. One such report, Color Maintenance of LEDs in Laboratory and Field Applications, explores the phenomenon of color shift as a cause of early failure for some SSL products, discussing the metrics used for communicating color shift and providing guidance on how to monitor it. Another report, Dimming LEDs with Phase-Cut Dimmers: The Specifier’s Process for Maximizing Success, was created in response to issues raised about dimming by energy-efficiency organizations and specifiers and provides both general guidance and step-by-step procedures for designing phase-controlled LED dimming on both new and existing projects, as well as real-world examples of how to use those procedures. A third report, SSL Pricing and Efficacy Trend Analysis for Utility Program Planning, was produced in response to requests from utilities and energy-efficiency programs (EEPs) for information to help them forecast the order in which important SSL applications will become cost-effective and estimate when each “tipping point” will be reached.
To further help utilities and EEPs keep pace with SSL so that they can maximize energy savings, DOE held a special roundtable in Portland, OR, just prior to the 2013 Solid-State Lighting Market Introduction Workshop. The Portland roundtable was a follow-up to a similar one held in 2012 in Chicago, where participants were asked to share key issues and challenges they faced as they adopted or expanded SSL programs — and to describe the information resources, program approaches, and other tools they needed in order to work together and with DOE to accelerate SSL market adoption. DOE used that 2012 feedback to implement a number of program changes and new efforts, and the goal of the Portland roundtable was to find out how these new strategies are working and to determine what else is needed.
Another roundtable DOE convened in 2013 involved representatives from the U.S. OLED industry, which had expressed the need for increased collaboration and possibly even a pilot production line to accelerate the development of manufacturing technology for OLED lighting. The OLED roundtable was held in Victor, NY, to explore these issues and to bring the OLED community together and create a group with common goals to move the industry forward. There will be an opportunity to continue these discussions at DOE’s 11th annual SSL R&D Workshop, which will be held January 28-30 in Tampa, FL.
DOE continued to support SSL R&D in 2013, although due to funding uncertainties we issued a solicitation for SSL Manufacturing R&D only, and delayed solicitations for Core Technology Research and Product Development. However, last month DOE issued a new SSL funding opportunity announcement that covered not only Manufacturing R&D, but also Core Technology Research and Product Development efforts needed to achieve higher efficacy (an ultimate goal of 250 lm/W) and lower cost. These targets and others are reflected in our SSL R&D Multi-Year Program Plan and Manufacturing Roadmap, each of which was updated in 2013 with the help of industry feedback.
There were many other highlights for DOE’s SSL Program in 2013 — such as the continuing traction of the Municipal Solid-State Street Lighting Consortium, whose tools are being used by a growing number of cities across the country, and the completion of 25,000 hours of lumen-maintenance testing of the L Prize-winning product, which showed that well-designed LED integral lamps can operate with excellent lumen and chromaticity maintenance over long periods of time.
These are exciting times for SSL. LED lighting products are competing in a growing number of applications and seem to be turning up everywhere — from the shelves of big-box retailers to the nighttime skylines of cities and towns. It’s easy to lose sight of the fact that the technology is still at a relatively early stage of its development and has a long way to go. DOE continues to work to accelerate SSL technology advances and guide successful market introduction of high-efficiency, high-performance products, so that solid-state lighting can fulfill its energy-saving potential.
