NEW YORK
–
How much would you pay for an amazing, state-of-the-art light bulb? Shoppers will be asking themselves that very question at Home Depot and other outlets starting Sunday — Earth Day — when the bulb that won a $10 million government contest goes on sale.
The bulb is the most energy-efficient yet,
lasts about 20 years and is supposed to give off a pleasing,
natural-looking light. But what separates it from the pack most is the
price tag: $60.
That's the price that reflects
the cost of the components, especially the top-notch chips, or diodes,
that give off the light, and that's the price commercial customers will
pay. But the manufacturer, the Netherlands-based Philips, is discounting
it right away to $50 for consumers, and working on deals with electric
utilities to discount it even further, by as much as $20 to $30.
This
means the bulb will cost anywhere from $20 to $60, depending on where
it's found. Online, consumers will be paying $50 for each bulb, because
utilities don't subsidize online sales.
Congress
launched the L Prize contest in 2007, with the goal of creating a bulb
to replace the standard, energy-wasting "incandescent" 60-watt bulb. The
requirements were rigorous, and Philips was the only entrant. Its bulb
was declared the winner last year, after a year and a half of testing.
The contest stipulated that the winning bulb be sold for $22 in its
first year on the market.
In that context, the
$60 price tag has raised some eyebrows. Ed Crawford, the head of
Philips' U.S. lighting division, said it was always part of the plan to
have utility rebates bring the price down to that range.
Utilities
already offer rebates on energy-saving products like
compact-fluorescent bulbs, or CFLs. In return for efforts to curb energy
use, regulators allow utilities to raise their rates. The discounts are
invisible to consumers — the utilities pay the stores directly.
For
$25, or even $35, the bulb looks like a good investment compared to an
incandescent bulb. It uses only 10 watts of power, meaning saves about
$8 per year in electricity if it's used four hours a day. It's expected
to last at least 30,000 hours, or thirty times longer than an
incandescent. At four hours per day, that's 20 years.
But
the Philips bulb is not only up against $1 incandescent bulbs. Compact
fluorescents, or CFLs, are nearly as energy efficient. They use about 15
watts for 60 watts worth of light. They're much cheaper too, typically
costing around $5. The Philips bulb looks odd too — the light-emitting
surfaces are yellow when the bulb isn't lit, yet shine white when it is.
The
Philips bulb has some advantages over a CFL: it lasts three times
longer and gives off a more natural-looking light. It doesn't contain
the toxic mercury vapor inside CFLs, which creates a minor hazard when
they break.
Philips has been selling a
cheaper, less efficient version of the L Prize bulb since 2010, and
Crawford says it's done well —LEDs now account for about 20 percent of
Philips' U.S. lighting sales, up from nearly zero three years ago.
Crawford
credits the L Prize with pushing the company to focus research efforts
on LED bulbs. The finished product may be expensive, but the technology
the company developed for the prize submission has already been used
successfully in its cheaper AmbientLED lights.
"It's
the question we always receive: 'Well gee, wouldn't the technology have
developed this way without the L Prize?' I think it absolutely would
have. The real question is: 'How quickly would it have happened?"
Crawford said.
The company is three to five years ahead of where it would have been without the goading of the prize, he said.
The
race is now on to produce LED bulbs that produce 100 watts worth of
light. The incandescent equivalents are no longer made or imported,
victims of a federal ban that kicked in a the beginning of the year.
They're now starting to disappear from store shelves. Squeezing enough
LEDs into a bulb-sized space to produce that much light is a big
technical challenge — LEDs generate heat, which destroys them over time
unless they're well cooled.
Incandescent bulbs of 40 watts and above will be banned in 2014.
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/story/2012-04-16/philips-light-bulb/54321662/1
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