LED lighting in Taiwan must have a minimum efficacy of 70lm/W, the Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) has announced. The new legislation requires all indoor warm-white LED lamps to have a minimum efficacy of 70 lm/W, while cool-white LEDs must be more efficient, reaching a minimum of 75 lm/W.
The Global Lighting Association (GLA) welcomed the move, saying that minimum effiacy requirements should be set at such a level that good-quality products are widely available and at an affordable price. “From the GLA’s position,” explained GLA representative Michael Ng, “we globally support one minimum level of performance for lighting products, just like what is announced by Taiwan’s MOEA Bureau of Energy. This is very different from just an energy labelling scheme. In general this serves the purposes of ensuring safe and quality products for the consumers, maintaining interoperability and competition on performance.”
Ng, who is also the director of international affairs for the Taiwan Lighting Fixture Export Association, added: “There are adequate surveillance and penalties in place to ensure that the vendors are truthful and the standards used are internationally harmonised.”
“It’s an interesting turn of events,” commented Iain Mcrae, head of global lighting applications at Thorn Lighting and past SLL president when Lighting invited him to comment on Taiwan’s new standard. “The move is clearly designed to discourage people using high colour temperature, or perhaps to encourage retailers or manufacturers to favour warmer light by making it easier to comply.”
But he isn’t sure if the move is going to have a knock-on effect: “Whether it will catch on on a global scale is a difficult one. We see general disquiet over the use of high CCT in the outdoors in many countries. Generally it’s not liked, but that may be a more historic thing. Previously such cold colours were simply not available. In some countries, South Africa, for example, there is generally a wider acceptance of colder colours, less so in Europe.”
Lighting in Taiwan accounted for 10.9 per cent of the country’s total power consumption in 2013, according to MOEA’s Bureau of Energy (BOE). Residential lighting accounted for 40 per cent of the total lighting power consumption.
