Philips Lighting North America has won the Bright Tomorrow Lighting Prize (L Prize) in the 60-watt replacement bulb category of the competition.

The US Department of Energy’s L Prize challenged the lighting industry to develop high performance, energy-saving replacements for conventional light bulbs that will save consumers and businesses money.

If every 60-watt incandescent bulb in the US was replaced with the 10-watt L Prize winner, the nation would save about 35 terawatt-hours of electricity or $3.9 billion in one year and avoid 20 million metric tons of carbon emissions, a stateemnt said.

Submitted in 2009, the Philips LED bulb successfully completed 18 months of demanding 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, a statement said.

“The L Prize challenges the best and brightest minds in the US lighting industry to make the technological leaps forward that can greatly reduce the money we spend to light our homes and businesses each year,” said Energy Secretary Steven Chu.

“Not only does the L Prize challenge innovative companies like Philips to make LED technology even more energy efficient, it also spurs the lighting industry to make LEDs affordable for American families,” he added.

“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,” he added.

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 statement said. – TradeArabia News Service