New York - How much would you pay for an amazing, state-of-the-art
light bulb? Shoppers will be asking themselves that very question at
Home Depot and other outlets starting Sunday — Earth Day — when the
bulb that won a $10 million government contest goes on sale.

The bulb is the most energy-efficient yet, lasts about 20 years and is
supposed to give off a pleasing, natural-looking light. But what
separates it from the pack most is the price tag: $60.

That’s the price that reflects the cost of the components, especially
the top-notch chips, or diodes, that give off the light, and that’s
the price commercial customers will pay. But the manufacturer, the
Netherlands-based Philips, is discounting it right away to $50 for
consumers, and working on deals with electric utilities to discount it
even further, by as much as $20 to $30.

This means the bulb will cost anywhere from $20 to $60, depending on
where it’s found. Online, consumers will be paying $50 for each bulb,
because utilities don’t subsidize online sales.

Congress launched the L Prize contest in 2007, with the goal of
creating a bulb to replace the standard, energy-wasting “incandescent”
60-watt bulb. The requirements were rigorous, and Philips was the only
entrant. Its bulb was declared the winner last year, after a year and
a half of testing. The contest stipulated that the winning bulb be
sold for $22 in its first year on the market.

In that context, the $60 price tag has raised some eyebrows. Ed
Crawford, the head of Philips’ U.S. lighting division, said it was
always part of the plan to have utility rebates bring the price down
to that range.

Utilities already offer rebates on energy-saving products like
compact-fluorescent bulbs, or CFLs. In return for efforts to curb
energy use, regulators allow utilities to raise their rates. The
discounts are invisible to consumers — the utilities pay the stores
directly.

For $25, or even $35, the bulb looks like a good investment compared
to an incandescent bulb. It uses only 10 watts of power, meaning saves
about $8 per year in electricity if it’s used four hours a day. It’s
expected to last at least 30,000 hours, or thirty times longer than an
incandescent. At four hours per day, that’s 20 years.

But the Philips bulb is not only up against $1 incandescent bulbs.
Compact fluorescents, or CFLs, are nearly as energy efficient. They
use about 15 watts for 60 watts worth of light. They’re much cheaper
too, typically costing around $5. The Philips bulb looks odd too — the
light-emitting surfaces are yellow when the bulb isn’t lit, yet shine
white when it is.

The Philips bulb has some advantages over a CFL: it lasts three times
longer and gives off a more natural-looking light. It doesn’t contain
the toxic mercury vapor inside CFLs, which creates a minor hazard when
they break.

Philips has been selling a cheaper, less efficient version of the L
Prize bulb since 2010, and Crawford says it’s done well —LEDs now
account for about 20 percent of Philips’ U.S. lighting sales, up from
nearly zero three years ago.

Crawford credits the L Prize with pushing the company to focus
research efforts on LED bulbs. The finished product may be expensive,
but the technology the company developed for the prize submission has
already been used successfully in its cheaper AmbientLED lights.

“It’s the question we always receive: ‘Well gee, wouldn’t the
technology have developed this way without the L Prize?’ I think it
absolutely would have. The real question is: ‘How quickly would it
have happened?” Crawford said.

The company is three to five years ahead of where it would have been
without the goading of the prize, he said.

The race is now on to produce LED bulbs that produce 100 watts worth
of light. The incandescent equivalents are no longer made or imported,
victims of a federal ban that kicked in a the beginning of the year.
They’re now starting to disappear from store shelves. Squeezing enough
LEDs into a bulb-sized space to produce that much light is a big
technical challenge — LEDs generate heat, which destroys them over
time unless they’re well cooled.

Incandescent bulbs of 40 watts and above will be banned in 2014.

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