$50 Light bulb: DoE prize fail.

• Author: Mangu-Ward, Katherine
• Position: Citings - United States Department of Energy - Brief article

IN 2007, when Congress passed legislation that would gradually ban old-school incandescent light bulbs, it added a carrot to the pile of sticks: a $10 million prize to encourage the development of a cheap, green, domestic alternative to the dearly departed Edison model.

Five years later, that bulb is coming to a hardware store near you. It will cost you $50. The winner of the Department of Energy's L Prize, an LED bulb from the North American arm of the Dutch company Philips, fails to meet many of the original prize specifications, including price and the amount of the bulb that is made in America. Meanwhile, a virtually identical Philips bulb manufactured abroad is available for about $25.

While a $10 million check to sell a slight variation on a product you were developing anyway seems like a pretty sweet...