The DesignLights Consortium® released the final version of SSL Technical Requirements Version 5 on February 14, 2020. This version includes two policies - V5.0 and V5.1 - which have different effective dates. V5.0 listed products must be updated to V5.1 by April 15, 2022, or they will be delisted on June 30, 2022.

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What is the purpose of V5.0?

According to the DLC®, “the purpose is to continue to accelerate broad scale energy savings by improving the quality of light and controllability of DLC listed products.”

The basis of V5.0 is efficacy, increase quality of light, and controllability. Let’s explore each of these in more detail.

Efficacy

By increasing efficacy more energy savings can be captured in utility programs. Which in turn provides more value to customers. The long term goal for efficacy is to continue to increase it so there will be positive impacts on quality and cost. The V5 efficacy increase represents a smaller increase as did previous versions, but over time the small increases will have a big impact.

Requirements:

The efficacy increases intend to balance energy savings, product cost, and quality of light

DLC Standard minimum efficacy requirements increase an average of 12% over V4.4

DLC Premium under V5.0 is a flat 15 lumen per watt increase over Standard