LED's Good Housekeeping Seal

By Eric A. Taub

Professional conferences always have refrains, leitmotifs that begin to define the thrust of many of the discussions. One of the popular ones at last week's Solid State Lighting Conference in San Francisco was, "We don't want to screw up like we did with compact fluorescents."

The point was that when compact fluorescent bulbs first hit the market, they were poorly engineered, overpriced and oversized alternatives to traditional light bulbs. They buzzed, created harsh light, took 30 seconds to warm up, and didn't last as long as promised.

The trick is how to avoid that problem with LED lighting, the technology that many believe will eventually replace most other lighting technologies in office buildings and homes.

As I've noted before, there is already plenty of LED junk for sale in the nation's home improvement stores. Many products use significantly more power than they claim and last a fraction of the time they advertise. At the conference, lighting designers chimed in to say that they rarely found LED products that performed properly.

"Some LED products are only delivering 30 percent of the illumination that they claim," said James Brodrick, the Department of Energy's solid state lighting head.

To stem the disaster of a potential consumer backlash against a technology that, done right, could have major positive environmental impacts, the D.O.E. is bringing LED lighting products into its Energy Star program.

Those products that get Energy Star certification will have to perform according to a set of Energy Department guidelines, as to the amount of light they produce and their effective life.

A handful (but just a handful) of products have received the Energy Star imprimatur. But Mr. Brodrick thinks he'll have up to 300 LED certified products by the end of the year.

If his agency pulls it off, it could help provide a comfort level for consumers concerned about new technologies. It's just too bad there's no Energy Star certification for price. With early LED replacement lamps priced at $60 a pop, the industry could use one.