No mercury Lights

Hi Susan,

The purchasing plan portion of this credit is a great framework for an ID credit in BD+C projects. In your situation, when you submit the plan, you'll also need to show via product cut sheets that the efficacy (measured in lumens/watt) of the mercury-free LED lamps in your plan are equivalent to their mercury-containing counterparts. I would start by comparing them with the efficacies listed in the ENERGY STAR lamp specifications for similar applications.
(http://www.energystar.gov/products/certified-products/detail/light-bulbs and http://www.energystar.gov/index.cfm?c=lamps.pr_crit_lamps)

Hi Susan and Melissa. We are making use of LEED BD+C: New Construction (v4) Innovation credit: Purchasing – lamps. We only have LED lamps in the building, thus with no mercury content. Since it is required to enter only mercury
content per bulb, mean light output per bulb type (lumens) and rated life per bulb (hrs) why do we still need to show that efficacy is equivalent to mercury-containing counterparts? And in that case how can the mercury-containing counterparts be defined?

Hi Charalampos,

I've always understood the requirement to show equivalent efficacy as a quality-control measure, to prevent incentivizing the use of mercury-free bulbs that are overly energy-intensive or produce poor light quality compared to mercury-containing bulbs.

Some LED lamps have direct counterparts (such as a screw-in LED downlight and a screw-in CFL), while for others you may need to judge based on use. Helen and Maria's posts further down this page may help you out.

Just to follow up on Melissa's comment, which I agree with completely - The requirement for proving efficiency is to ensure that buildings dont earn this credit by using mercury-free lamps that are LESS efficient than fluorescents - namely, incandescent lamps. That is, the credit isn't solely about mercury-free lighting, its about lowering the mercury content of your energy efficient lighting. In your case, Charalampos, I suspect that standard manufacturer cut sheets for your lamps stating that they are LED will be enough to make most reviewers happy.

Hope that helps,

Dan