Today, LED lighting bulb is competitive with traditional source in applications such as down lighting, under cabinet lighting and directional lighting. What's more, a specifier can easily locate a good solid-state luminaries, compare it with other luminaries on an apples-to-apples basis, and be reasonably confident how it will perform in the intended application (at least for the short term, as long-term in performance is still largely an unknown). The "Wild West" is being tamed, at least for those who take the time to make informed product decisions. For the uninformed, it is still easy to get burned.
In 2006, we began independent testing of commercially available LED lighting bulbs with the Commercially Available LED Product Evaluation and Reporting program, confirming its suspicion that the lack of standards for testing and reporting has led to LED lighting bulb performance are excellent. Luminaries performance, for example, it is much more high brightness than the traditional lights.
In the past two years, efficacy doubled among tested LED products, suggestive of the market as a whole. Color quality is steadily improving. In some applications, from downlights to small-wattage replacement lamps, LED is a competitive technology. Consider downlights, an ideal application for LEDs because of the source's inherent directionality: In recent testing, five 4- and 6-in. aperture, and 8-39w recessed downlights were tested against 26-32w triple-tube pin-based CFL downlights. All of the LED lighting bulbs were found to meet or beat the light output and efficacy of 45-75w incandescent and halogen downlights, and all except one beat the efficacy levels of the CFL downlights.
