The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has announced plans to invest more than $10 million to help research and development in "efficient lighting."
The funding will go to nine research and development projects which will support "solid-state lighting… core technology research, product development, and manufacturing research and development," the DOE said on Friday.
The projects would help to boost the development of energy-efficient light emitting diode and organic light emitting diode lighting products that would help to cut energy costs, the DOE added.
"Solid-state lighting research and development has contributed to more than $2.8 billion in U.S. energy cost savings over the past 15 years, and further improvements in the technology will increase those savings even more in the years to come," secretary of energy Ernest Moniz said in a statement.
Solid state lighting is based on LEDs or OLEDs rather than gases, filaments or plasma, according to the DOE, and has the potential to be more energy efficient than other types of lighting technology.
"By 2030, solid-state lighting could reduce national lighting electricity use by nearly half—which would equate to the total energy consumed by 24 million American homes today and could save American families and businesses $26 billion annually," Moniz added.
The DOE said its research and development would help "unlock" new performance and energy savings for solid-state lighting. One of its targets is to increase LED efficiency by an extra 66 percent.
