Energy & Environment Energy Cost Savings Consultants

Energy & Environment wants to help maximize your energy savings while maintaining, and in most cases, improving the lighting and operational quality in your facility. E&E’s trained lighting specialists will provide you with a comprehensive lighting analysis and will implement the desired retrofits to your current lighting system.

Lighting retrofits provide a multitude of benefits

• Energy Savings - Lighting retrofits can greatly reduce energy consumption and lower your energy bills while maintaining light levels and quality by upgrading light components to more efficient and advanced technologies.
• Improved Lighting Quality - Lighting retrofits can improve lighting quality by targeting problem areas with specific design considerations to overcome lighting issues. Newer technologies also add increased reliability and longevity to the lighting system. These newer technologies provide better lighting-quality characteristics such as improved color, reduced flicker and greater light output.
• Reduced Maintenance and labor costs - Improvements in lighting technologies have led to increased lifetimes for components that will result in fewer failures and lengthen the time between maintenance activities.
• Pollution Reduction - By consuming less electricity, your facility will help reduce the demand and associated emissions from off-site power generation. These harmful emissions include CO2 and various other greenhouse gases.
• Green Power Systems - For those facilities powered by photovoltaic or other green-power systems, efficient lighting will help limit power demands. Using more efficient lighting will require less power to be generated, stored, and used to accomplish the same tasks, making alternative power systems more economically and technically feasible.

Common Lighting Problems

• Incandescent Bulbs - Incandescent lamps are one of the most inefficient lighting sources available. Old-fashion incandescent bulbs can be replaced with compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs) to achieve a 75% energy savings. CFLs lasts 8-10 times longer than incandescent lamps, which will reduce maintenance costs, labor and inventory demands.

  Source Type	Efficiency	Lamp Life	Cost/Year*
  A-Lamp	15 Lumens/Watt	1,000 hrs.	$23.36
  CFL	60 Lumens/Watt	10,000 hrs.	$5.84
  *Cost/year based on a comparison of a 100W Incandescent bulb and a 25W CFL, 8 hours per day, 365 days a year, at a utility rate of $.08 per kWh.

• T12 Fluorescent lamps - T12 Lamps are an older technology and should be replaced with T8 lamps in your facility. T8 lamps provide superior lighting quality and last longer, while improving efficiency by 30%. They also operate on electronic ballasts that are more efficient and produce much less heat than older magnetic ballasts.

  

• Old Exit Signs - Exit signs offer one of the easiest ways to reduce costs and save energy due to their long operating hours and traditionally poor source efficacy. If your facility has exit signs that utilizes either incandescent or CFL sources, it is strongly recommended that you replace these signs with LED-sourced exit signs as part of your retrofit program.

  Source Type	Power	Lamp Life	Cost/Year*
  Incandescent	40 Watt	1,000 hrs.	$28.03
  CFL	10-15 Watts	10,000 hrs.	$10.51
  LED	2-5 Watts	100,000 hrs.	$3.50
  *Cost/year based on a comparison of 8 hours per day, 365 days a year, at a utility rate of $.08 per kWh.

• Lighting left on when the space is unoccupied - If you have areas where lights are often left on while the space is unoccupied, then you should consider installing either an occupancy sensor or a timing switch. These control devices are relatively simple retrofits and can represent large energy saving opportunities in your facility.
• Exterior lights are on during daylight hours - There are several options to help avoid the unnecessary operation of exterior fixtures during the daylight hours. You can integrate a photocell into the lighting circuit to turn the lights off when daylight reaches a present level. A timer switch can also be integrated into your exterior lighting circuit and will turn the lights on and off according to an inputted schedule.
• Lights Flicker - If you have problems with flickering lamps, it is likely that you have a faulty ballast or lamp. Before replacing the ballast, determine if you have old T12 lamp technology. If you do, this might be an opportune time to implement a retrofit.
• Fixtures appear to have different colors in them - Fluorescent lamps come in a variety of “color temperatures". Low color temperature implies warmer (more yellow/red) light, while high color temperatures are appropriate for various tasks, but uniformity across a single workspace is desirable. Multiple color temperature lamps in the same space provide an uncomfortable and awkward environment.
• Glare in your Office Space - Glare is a common problem in office spaces, especially where computer tasks comprise a significant amount of the workload. Glare can lead to worker fatigue, eyestrain and reduced productivity. This problem can often be avoided through the use of an indirect lighting system.

High Density Discharge Lighting (HID) Systems

Compared with other installations (of the older T12 fluorescents, for example), a HID installation requires fewer individual fixtures, which sometimes allows for lower capital and installation costs. HID lamps are popular in applications that feature large expanses lit by distant fixtures, such as indoor and outdoor sports facilities, factories and warehouses with high ceilings, and street lighting.

Major advances in High Intensity Lighting (HID), High Pressure Sodium, Metal Halide type, for industrial, commercial, parking lot and roadway lighting applications now result in major savings that even recently did not have good options for energy savings. A new generation of technology has emerged. Electronic Ballasts - that drive the lamp much more softly - yet give more light on for a longer period of time are attracting the attention of many savvy buyers.

Advantages of HID Lighting

• Lower lifetime cost
• Fewer lamp replacements
• Energy conservation
• Reduced circuit loads, circuit breaker and wire gauge requirements
• 30% energy savings - minimum - maybe more
• Longer Bulb life - 50% than standard bulbs and maybe more
• Controllability - ever wanted to dim your lights? - now you can

Electronic ballasts can be turned off and on very quickly. They can be fully controlled either by photocell, motion control (as shown in above), wireless or internet control.

Contact us for an energy lighting audit. We've been in the business a long time, and we have completed many facilities. We've seen it all and we want to help solve your lighting and energy consumption program.

Related Links

• Energy Efficient Lighting Retrofits
• BioBased Spray Foam Insulation
• Green Roofing & Paving
• Solar Thermal Water Heating
• Energy Audits

Contact Us

Energy & Environment LLC
2125 Bolton Road NW
Atlanta, GA 30318-1107
Email Us
404-794-2023 Office
404-794-2022 Fax

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