Philips replaces 60W standard bulb with 12W LED alternative

At the Lightfar International tradeshow, Royal Philips Electronics unveiled its 12 watt EnduraLED light bulb it claims is the first LED replacement for a 60 watt incandescent light bulb.

It marks, said Rudy Provoost, CEO of Philips Lighting, an important breakthrough in the use of LED lighting technology in everyday applications.

To create the new alterative to the light bulb, Provoost said Philips researchers in The Netherlands created a new remote phosphorous technology and light distribution design, LUXEON LEDs were integrated from Philips Lumileds in San Jose, Ca., and electronics for the bulb were built at Philips Color Kinetics in Burlington, MA and Philips Lighting Electronics in Rosemont, IL. From there, the bulbs were then sent to the Philips Quality Assurance team in Shanghai to be rigorously tested for quality and safety standards.

"Consumers will now have an LED alternative to the most commonly used incandescent bulb, which will deliver up to 80% energy savings and last 25 times longer than its century-old predecessor."

The significance of developing an LED equivalent to the 60 watt has been recognized by many international organizations, including the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE), who created the L-prize competition to spur development of this highly sought after innovation.

According to Provoost, Philips' entry was the first, and to date remains the only submission for the L-Prize, which was used as the basis for the 12 watt EnduraLED. Exceeding the Energy Star specifications for a 60 watt bulb, the EnduraLED uses only 12 watts of power while delivering an industry benchmark of 806 lumens.

If Philips is successful in marketing its new alternative to the incandescent, it has a very good chance of grabbing a lion's share of the market domestic incandescent light bulbs at least in the U.S. Every year more than 425 million 60-watt incandescent light bulbs are sold in the United States, representing approximately 50% of the domestic incandescent light bulb market.

According to calculations by Philips, this LED replacement has the potential to save 32.6 terawatt-hours of electricity in one year, enough to power the lights of 16.7 million U.S. households or 14.4% of the total number of households in the entire US. It would also eliminate the generation 5.3 million metric tons of carbon emissions annually.

The EnduraLED works with standard dimmers, further simplifying use. It has rated life of 25,000 hours, as opposed to a standard 60 watt incandescent bulb which is rated at about 1,000 hours.

This means that over the course of the LED life, replacing a 60 watt standard bulb could save a business or household $120 per lamp. It will be available in the U.S. in the fourth quarter of 2010, well ahead of U.S. legislation requiring the use of more energy efficient lighting which commences in 2012. The retail price of this EnduraLED has not yet been finalized.