Grote Industries as joined the U.S. Dept. of Energy’s (DOE) Lighting Facts program. The program is designed to provide correct, accurate and useful LED information for work lamps.
According to Grote, LED lamp performance information has been lacking, with lumen measurement based on the number of LEDs installed in the lamp, or lumen measurement at initial lamp turn-on. Using these two methods provides an inaccurate output value for actual on-the-job performance. Other issues have been shorter lifetimes than advertised, poor efficiency (lumens per watt), or poor or inconsistent color quality.
Grote said it has been submitting its work lamps to DOE-approved labs for testing. Their data is then sent to the DOE for approval and certification. Once that process is complete, the DOE awards Grote an official label, which cannot be modified in any way. This label carries the key certified data that can be used by purchasers to make their product choices with confidence.
The DOE-approved labs provide the data that appears on the Lighting Facts label, including Light Output (Lumens), Watts (power consumption), Lumens per Watt (efficacy) Color Accuracy (based on the accepted Color Rendering Index (CRI) index), Light Color (Correlated Color Temperature (CCT) – indicating relationship to actual daylight), and Warranty information.
“We at Grote feel providing accurate product information is an ethical matter. The benefits of this program are significant and widespread,” said Grote global sales and marketing vice president, John Grote. “We want our customers to be able to compare our products to those of competing manufacturers on a level playing field. As other competitors discover and use this process, customers will be able to select LED lighting products with confidence, weeding out inferior products, to achieve their own price/performance objectives using accurate information.”
