January/February 2010: LEDs: Avoiding the CFL Debacle

The lighting efficacies of LEDs have been rising steadily and are poised to overtake CFLs. Fluorescents and CFLs still outshine LEDs with respect to general applications and cost of light, but LEDs are already superior for some niche applications and offer many new exciting illumination opportunities. Now we need to ensure that the reputation of this new energysaving lighting source won’t be undermined by a tidal wave of shoddy products. Tests for quality, efficiency, and durability of LEDs have been mostly established but it’s still a jungle out there in the marketplace. Here’s what a recent DOE report wrote about one LED:

Product 09-65 is sold in big-box retail stores and home improvement stores, but includes blatantly misleading product labeling, claiming to replace 40W incandescent lamps. In fact, initial testing (per LM-79) reveals that it only produces the light output of lower performing 15W incandescent candelabras. Longer-term testing reveals that it depreciates to a level of negligible light output after 1000 hours of continuous operation, negating all cost-savings claims on the packaging because they are based on 30,000-hour bulb life.1

This is incredibly valuable information (indeed, the whole report is excellent) but wouldn’t you like to know who manufactured that LED? Sorry, that’s not exactly confidential, but it does take further research. If a consumer buys Product 09-65, do you think that she will soon buy a second LED? Not very likely. Does this sound like the history of CFLs? This leaves organizations eager to promote energy-efficient lighting in an awkward position. They want to promote purchases of energy-efficient lights with endorsements, incentives, and tax breaks. But in a scenario similar to CFLs, these actions will only accelerate a race to the bottom in quality… and in efficiency. These groups desperately need to attach minimum levels of quality, performance, and efficiency to the incentives before the market is awash in LED junk. We need to take strong action now to protect the reputation of future LEDs. In fact, a second DOE-sponsored report describing the lessons learned from CFLs recommended:

Be aggressive about dealing with technology failures that affect main benefit claims.2

OK, let’s be aggressive. Let’s name (and shame) manufacturers and retailers of shoddy LEDs (and CFLS for that matter). Third-party testing should play a crucial role. At the same time, we need international action to quickly establish temporary performance specifications for LEDs. Europe, Japan, Australia, and China are also confronting underperforming LEDs, so the action must be global. LEDs are particularly attractive replacements for kerosene lamps and candles, so we want good lights in Africa, too. An informal global agreement could create interim specifications that would fill the void until the standards organizations and regulatory agencies catch up. These interim specifications won’t be perfect, but they will be far better than none. A simple quality mark must appear on all complying products. Consumers will buy more energy-efficient LEDs sooner if they are confident that the lights have consistent reliability, efficiency, and quality.

1. http://apps1.eere.energy.gov/buildings/publications/pdfs/ssl/caliper_round-9_summary.pdf  (page 25).

2. http://apps1.eere.energy.gov/buildings/publications/pdfs/ssl/cfl_lessons_learned_web.pdf
(page iii).

Photo by Evan Mills
 


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March/April 2010 Editorial: Home Energy Monitors

Home Energy Monitors, that is, devices that display a home’s energy consumption have been touted as Silicon Valley’s contribution to the national energy conservation effort. A Home Energy Monitor (or HEM) constantly informs the occupants of their home’s electricity and gas consumption, along with conversions to monthly costs and comparisons with previous periods. Some models can (or will) communicate with heating and air conditioning systems. These devices will enable consumers to more carefully manage energy consumption and quickly identify energy wasteful practices. A better-informed consumer, the theory goes, will take more actions to reduce energy use. This scenario is consistent with our belief that if we deliver energy information to the consumer they will act upon it.

Unfortunately an article in this issue suggests that HEMs don’t automatically save energy (see “The Net Impact of Home Energy Feedback Devices,” p. 20). In fact, the energy savings were, as the authors succinctly concluded “not statistically different from zero”. Furthermore, the participants in the study were highly motivated and actually paid to get the meters. If these consumers don’t save energy then what can we expect from the larger population? This evaluation is not alone: a soon-to-be-released report reviewing a large number of studies found similar results. Other evaluations in Europe and Japan also observed little or no energy savings from HEMs.

HEMs suffer from a variety of drawbacks, ranging from clunky user interfaces to voracious appetites for batteries. At least one cynic has called the HEMs “a technology in search of a problem” because monitoring a home’s energy use appears to be a wonderful application of advances in local networks and low-cost processing. HEMs today are also dropped into a lonely, inhospitable world where few other devices communicate with the same protocols (if they are able to communicate at all).

One underlying problem is that energy consumption events occur relatively slowly and rarely require the bandwidth of a webcam or audio stream. Put another way, watching home energy use on a display or on the Web is boring. Most people lose interest pretty quickly. The high attrition rates found in the Oregon study demonstrate this phenomenon.

Meanwhile, we haven’t exploited the information flows that are already in place, such as monthly energy bills. An experimental project in Gainesville, Florida, demonstrates how disclosure of monthly energy information can encourage friendly competition among neighbors. And, beyond competition, people can learn that their neighbors enjoy lifestyles similar to their own but with dramatically less electricity, natural gas and water (see Figures 1 and 2). This is a first step towards reducing energy use.

In spite of the negative results so far, I still support the development and installation of HEMs. The technology is so cheap that a HEM can pay for itself even if it saves only a few percent of energy use. A HEM may pay for itself by alerting users to high peak electrical use where utilities charge extra for it. A HEM can also serve as a useful diagnostic tool (and data logger for a high school science project). In the long run, the HEM will become less lonely when appliances are able to communicate and provide information that consumers actually find useful. All of this calls for much stronger pressure on manufacturers toward harmonization of communications protocols and greatly improved user interfaces.

But we shouldn’t fool ourselves, consumers aren’t going to check the displays of their HEMs like they visit their Facebook pages, and HEMs are going to save, at best, a tiny amount of home energy.
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