Avraham Mor's Blog

When going to the grocery store, many people check out the nutrition facts label on the side of the box to make sure that the food they purchase meets their needs.  This label has become easy to recognize and read and we know exactly where to look for fat, calories, sugar, etc.  It makes sense that we would use this labeling technique for lighting.  The US Department of Energy (US DOE) recently released their final lighting facts label for use with LED products.  This label includes information that a lighting specifier needs to select the appropriate lamp for a project; broken down in 5 categories: lumens, efficacy, watts, correlated color temperature and color rendering index.   This is measured by the IES LM-79, which is the industry standard for testing photometric performance.

One manufacturer released their LED lights with a lighting facts label that closely resembled a nutrition facts label, even using the same font on the header!  This label was not approved through the US DOE.  A company spokesperson stated that they were trying to be helpful in providing this information to consumers and said they were actually very pleased that they were reprimanded by the DOE as it meant that the program works and the regulations are being enforced.  While the company’s label did look very similar to the DOE label and had all the same information, it was missing two key components.  In the top right corner of the new label is the brand name and in the lower left corner is the registration number of the product.  This shows that this product has been properly tested and registered in order to prove that the facts they are presenting have been verified for accuracy. 

Click on the images below to enlarge.

Check out the new lighting facts label at http://www.lightingfacts.com/default.aspx?cp=label.