California Edison's Lighting Technology Center
Just paid a visit to California Edison over here in Southern California. They’re one of the few utility companies who are taking an ACTIVE role, in LED technology and have an LED testing lab that has been testing LED MR16 bulbs from about 60 different LED manufacturers for about 6 months now. They’re just about finished and we’ll be getting a copy of the report and we’ll be sure to share the results here on the blog!
I was able to dig a little bit and find out some VERY interesting things they’ve learned so far from the past 6 months:
- The range of quality of bulbs varied WIDELY
- “Warm White” can look very different from one manufacturer to the next
- About 60% of the bulbs purchased have either DIED or been removed from the test (because their light output dropped to less than 70%)
- Some manufacturers offered NO warranty *SCARY*
Overall, it seems that many fly-by-night manufacturers are cropping up (mostly in China), but only a handful are creating quality products - as the saying goes - you get what you pay for…
Image Source: http://www.sce.com
