Text-Alternative Version: L Prize Testing Video

Following is a text version of the L Prize testing video.

James Brodrick, Lighting Program Manager, U.S. Department of Energy: The Department of Energy is spending a tremendous amount of time on testing. This buys down risk. This is quite a gauntlet of tests. You have to submit your light bulb-2000, plus a business plan. Then, we go into a four-level test: photometric performance where you see how many lumens are coming out, which direction those lumens are heading.

Narrator: During the photometric testing stage, entry samples are evaluated with LM-79 procedures that measure electrical characteristics, light output, luminous intensity distribution, and color.

Jim Brodrick: We're looking at field tests, where it's put in hallways, table lamps, ceiling lamps, in buildings in the U.S. with our L Prize Partners.

Narrator: Lamps are installed in field test sites across North America to assess their performance in real applications. L Prize partners utilize site measurements and user surveys to gauge energy efficiency, performance, reliability, and customer acceptance.

Jim Brodrick: There's a stress test-shake, rattle, roll, bake and heat.

Narrator: Stress testing subjects lamps to extreme conditions, such as high and low temperatures, humidity, vibration, high and low voltage, and various electrical distortions.

Jim Brodrick: The last test is long-term life. This is a tough one because the LEDs tend to last a long, long time. So that's going to take a lot of months where we are testing 200 samples in a special test facility that will see how long the actual L Prize entry will last.

Jeff McCullough, Senior Research Engineer, at the L Prize Lumen Maintenance Test Facility, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory: Behind me is what we call the lumen maintenance test apparatus and it's used to test the L Prize lamp submissions. The lumen maintenance test apparatus houses 204 lamps. There's a rest state and there's also a calibration lamp, so actually we're measuring 202 L Prize lamps. This apparatus measures light output, color, whether the lamps fail, all in an automatic fashion. It keeps the lamps at 113 degrees, or 45 C. It is totally automated so that once it starts a data collection sequence, it runs through all 202 lamps, stores all that data in a database, and then returns to a rest state. It's an automated way that allows us to see in real time what's happening.

Narrator: Each phase of testing insures that L Prize-winning products will meet the competition's rigorous requirements.

Jim Brodrick: This thing will probably be the most tested light bulb in history, and this is all to reduce risk and raise confidence for the consumers out in the aisles of the big boxes, and our utility L Prize Partners.