The higher the claimed lifetime

In the letter to all stakeholders, EPA responded a series of amendments for the purpose of improving transparency and increasing flexibility, saying that it has seriously considered all suggestions and have published them on the Lighting normative's website for public review, and comes with a summary of the comments EPA has responded. The final draft retains the key elements of the draft 4, added some minor modifications and further refined the dimming requirements.

Notably, the final draft allows new models automatically to pass certification, as long as the changes in these models will not violate any performance standards or any other requirements of this specification. In addition, the new draft updates the "tolerance" section to make the specific tolerance consistent with the UL1993 safety report requirements; the test data of measuring the temperature change has also been extended. The final draft also defined the tolerance range of luminous efficiency and light output value. References to new models have been removed from the specific product variation section. The specification notes that any lamp variant of a certified product may be selected for verification testing and the results from such random testing will impact the certification for all variants certified that are using the same representative model test data. New models that fall outside of the allowed tolerances that exempt it from fresh certification must undergo a minimum of 3,000 hours of testing before any Energy Star certification can be granted.


For initial lifetime claims of 25,000 or less hours, Energy Star certification can be obtained after just 3,000 hours of testing if a certain percentage of lumen maintenance is achieved. This required percentage is based on the claimed lifetime. The higher the claimed lifetime, the higher the percentage of the original lumen output must be maintained for the interim certification. However, testing of the lamp must continue through 6,000 hours for full lifetime certification. In a similar fashion, for lifetime claims between 30,000 and 50,000 hours can receive interim certification after 6,000 hours of testing if a certain percentage of lumen maintenance is achieved. For full lifetime certification of 30,000 or more hours, the testing must continue to specific hour values based upon the lifetime being claimed.