The LED Lighting Facts® program has played a pivotal role in the early adoption of Solid-State Lighting (SSL) technology and products. After nearly a decade, the program has achieved its original objectives with significant success, and is scheduled to end.
The voluntary LED Lighting Facts program was created in 2009 to help manufacturers, utilities, and others in the early days of LED lighting, when products entered the market with little or no verified information on product performance. At that time, the Department of Energy (DOE) technical support had assisted in the development of industry standard test procedures such as IES-LM-79-08 and IES-LM-80-08, which enabled product performance to be reported in a fair and comparable way. DOE testing and analysis of purchased LED products (conducted by independent, qualified test labs) was highlighting product quality issues and helping to discourage low-quality products and inflated manufacturer claims.
The LED Lighting Facts program created a framework to foster “truth in advertising” and to compel manufacturers to use the IES testing standards. The voluntary DOE LED Lighting Facts effort paved the way for the mandatory Federal Trade Commission (FTC) label now required for most general service lamps (including incandescent, compact fluorescent, and LED light bulbs). Several workshops were held to help the FTC formulate their label, which was introduced in 2010. Subsequently, the DOE Lighting Facts program assisted in compelling manufacturers to apply the IES standards to all product types, and by providing a publicly available database of checked data for comparison.
Altogether, DOE’s coordinated efforts had a significant impact on the early evolution and adoption of LED lighting technology and products. Over time, the LED Lighting Facts database grew to include more than 70,000 products and to serve more than 2,800 partners (manufacturers, retailers and distributors, lighting professionals, and energy efficiency program sponsors).
Today, entities such as the DesignLights Consortium® have evolved to offer similar resources, including a Qualified Products List of high-performing LED commercial lighting products. The ENERGY STAR® program offers resources for consumer-focused LED lighting products.
DOE’s LED Lighting Facts program has achieved its objective in addressing the original challenges noted in 2009:
- Compelling manufacturers to use the newly available IES testing standard, LM-79-08
- Helping to grow the accredited test laboratory capability for LED product testing nationwide
- Enabling performance to be reported on a fair and comparable basis
- Providing an easily searchable database for interested parties
The closure of the LED Lighting Facts program will occur in phases. As of March 1, 2018, products are no longer being added to the database. The website will close down on June 1, 2018, and until then will remain accessible for use of account-level tools and database searches. As always, search results can be downloaded in spreadsheet form. Please contact us if you have any questions and need any assistance.
The closure of DOE’s program DOES NOT affect the existing consumer Lighting Facts labels required by FTC rules. Those rules require the FTC labels to appear on packages for general service lamps and specialty consumer lamps. For more information, see the Frequently Asked Questions for the FTC Lighting Facts label