Assessing the Performance of LED-Based Flashlights Available in the Kenyan Off-Grid Lighting Market

Abstract

f-Grid Lighting Technology Assessment activity to provide manufacturers, resellers, program managers, and policymakers with information to help ensure the delivery of products that maximize consumer acceptance and the market success of off-grid lighting solutions for the developing world. Periodic Research Notes present new results in a timely fashion between the issuance of more formal and lengthy reports. Our results should not be construed as product endorsements by the authors. The Lumina Project includes an Of 1 Acknowledgments: This work was funded by The Rosenfeld Fund of the Blum Center for Developing Economies at UC Berkeley, through the U.S. Department of Energy under Contract No. DE-AC02-05CH11231. Art Rosenfeld has been a key supporter of this work. We wish to extend special thanks to Maina Mumbi and Peter Johnstone for procuring the flashlights in Kenya, Dr. Robert Van Kirk for his assistance with the statistical analyses, and Kristen Radecsky for training one of us (Jennifer Tracy) to perform all the performance measurement tests used for this study. Thanks go also to Meg Harper for providing the cover photograph (above). AbstractLow cost rechargeable flashlights that use LED technology are increasingly available in African markets. While LED technology holds promise to provide affordable, high quality lighting services, the widespread dissemination of low quality products may make it difficult to realize this potential. This study includes performance results for three brands of commonly available LED flashlights that were purchased in Kenya in 2009. The performance of the flashlights was evaluated by testing five units for each of the three brands. The tests included measurements of battery capacity, time required to charge the battery, maximum illuminance at one meter, operation time and lux-hours from a fully charged battery, light distribution, and color rendering. All flashlights tested performed well below the manufacturers' rated specifications; the measured battery capacity was 30-50% lower than the rated capacity and the time required to fully charge the battery was 6-25% greater than the rated time requirement. Our analysis further shows that within each brand there is considerable variability in each performance indicator. The five samples within a single brand varied from each other by as much as 22% for battery capacity measurements, 3.6% for the number of hours required for a full charge, 23% for maximum initial lux, 38% for run time, 11% for light distribution and by as much as 200% for color rendering. Results obtained are useful for creating a framework for quality assurance of off-grid LED products and will be valuable for informing consumers, distributers and product manufacturers about product performance.