DOE Opens PAR38 L Prize Competition

The US Department of Energy has announced the criteria for the PAR38 L Prize, challenging designers to produce an LED lamp twice as efficient as the current market average.

The L Prize^® Competition was launched by the DOE in 2008 to spur lighting manufacturers to develop super high-quality, high-efficiency LED replacements for two of the most commonly used bulbs: the 60W incandescent and the PAR38 halogen. The winner in the 60W replacement category, Philips Lighting North America, managed to meet performance targets that were a huge stretch at the time. The L Prize competition helped catalyze the market, so that today there are other LED 60W replacement products that have exceeded some of those performance targets.

The PAR38 is the next L Prize category. Once again, the bar has been set extremely high. An LED PAR38 that hits all of the targets would revolutionize PAR38 spotlighting. Although there's no shortage of LED PAR38s on the market, none has the narrow beam, high intensity, and excellent color rendering needed to replace the 70-90W PAR38 spotlights so prevalent in retail, display, hospitality, and other demanding applications.

PAR38 L Prize Requirements
Light output:	≥ 1,350 lumens
Wattage:	≤ 11W
Luminous efficacy:	≥ 123 lm/W
CCT:	2750K or 3000K, with a Duv of 0.004 or less
CRI:	≥ 90, with R9 ≥ 50
Lumen maintenance:	L70 > 25,000 hours
Color maintenance:	Δu’v’ ≤ 0.004 over the initial 6,000 hours of operation
Luminous intensity distribution:	minimum beam angle of 9° to a maximum of 15°
CBCP:	≥ 11,200 cd

Stretch goal

A product meeting the L Prize PAR38 requirements will check all the performance boxes, while decreasing energy use by 85%.

Of the 450-plus LED PAR38s currently listed with DOE's LED Lighting Facts^® program, fewer than 5% can meet the L Prize output target of 1,350 lumens, none even comes close to an efficacy of 123 lmW, and fewer than 5% have the required warm-white color and high CRI. Few guarantee color maintenance levels.

While currently available LED PAR38 lamps are "good enough" for general floodlighting applications, they can't compete with halogen technology for spotlighting that requires excellent color and beam requirements.

There are approximately 90 million PAR38 halogen lamps installed in the US in residential and commercial applications. DOE estimates that replacing them with bulbs efficient enough to win the PAR38 L Prize would save 11 terawatt-hours of electricity per year (roughly equivalent to the annual electricity consumption of our nation's capital) while annually avoiding 7 million metric tons of carbon emissions (the equivalent of removing 1.46 million cars from the road).

This is an engineering problem ripe for the solving. The L Prize $5 million cash prize being offered will pale in comparison to the publicity and other long-term benefits accompanying it. The L Prize PAR38 winner will jump to the head of the LED PAR38 class. Which company will get there first?

[Editor's note: Please see a more in-depth look at the PAR38 L Prize on our sister site, EDN.]