Royal Philips Electronics announced the release of their 12 watt EnduraLED bulb at the Lightfair International tradeshow this week, making the company first-to-market with an LED replacement for the most commonly used incandescent bulb in household lighting – the 60 watt.  The bulb delivers up to an 80% energy savings over the traditional 60 watt incandescent bulb, and can last 25 times longer than its century-old predecessor. It has an expected life span of 25,000 hours, equating into possible lifetime energy savings of $120 per bulb.

In the United States alone, more than 425 million 60 watt lamps are sold every year, which accounts for 50% of the incandescent bulb market. Philips calculates that converting these to LED could potentially save 32.6 terawatt hours of electricity annually – enough energy to power the lighting in 16.7 million homes.

In response to the most common complaint about LED’s, that they do not throw the same kind of light as incandescent lamps, Philips used an innovative design and remote phosphor technology to deliver the same soft white light consumers are accustomed to. The bulb also works with standard dimmers, addressing another common customer concern.

The importance of developing an LED equivalent to the 60 watt has been recognized by the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE), who created the L-prize competition to spur innovative development in this space. To date Philips is the only entrant in the contest, and while the EnduraLED is built on that prototype, the commercial version does not meet the 10 watt target outlined in the contest. The bulb will be available to consumers in the fourth quarter of 2010, although pricing is not available at this time.

In a similar announcement, just last month GE unveiled their LED replacement for the 40 watt incandescent bulb, which uses 9 watts of energy and is expected out late 2010 or early 2011.

Millennium Visual Systems recently attended the 2010 Lightfair International show as well and will soon be adding a broad selection of LED bulbs to our product line. Stay tuned for updates! And checkout our most recent LED bulb additions for general lighting and specialized needs.

Four New Jersey communities will be part of a pilot replacing cobra headlamps on utility poles with LEDs.

Camden, Elizabeth, Trenton and Verona are the four locales where LED street lamps will be tried.

PSE&G partnered with the New Jersey cities and Essex County in a test installation of new LEDs in the streetlights of certain city and county roadways.

Twenty-four LED street lamps are being installed without charge to the participating cities or counties.

PSE&G will be performing multiple tests during the next six to 12 months to determine reliability, light output, light quality, and energy consumption.

The municipalities are being asked to monitor their experience with the new type of lighting from a pedestrian perspective and to provide feedback to PSE&G regarding their satisfaction with the quality of the light.

LED technologies in street lighting are expected to reduce energy consumption by up to 70% while providing an equal or better illumination. In addition, they have a potential life expectancy of three to four times that of the current high intensity discharge (HID) sources like high-pressure sodium and metal halide.

LEDs are constructed by assembling multiple diodes connected together to form an array and then assembling multiple arrays to complete the fixture. LEDs are considered green alternatives because of their extremely low hazardous materials content and the fact that reducing energy consumption significantly will reduce the need for electric generation that produces carbon dioxide into the environment.

Today’s installations are the company’s first look into this technology and will permit a real world test of manufacturer and industry claims on energy savings, visual effect and reliability.

Following review and analysis of the program, PSE&G will then determine where and how this technology can be deployed in its street lighting and area lighting systems.

The New Jersey cities follow Ann Arbor, Michigan, Raleigh, North Carolina and Toronto, Ontario in making a commitment to LED technology.