Lighting Maintenance | Lighting Retrofit » Lighting Retrofit Useful Resources

Lighting Energy Calculators – GE Toolkit

Greg Crew — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 05:05:11 +0000

Figuring out how to calculate energy savings could be a bit difficult depending on the nature of your lighting retrofit. Lucky for us, many websites have an energy calculator tool. In this example, GE has a few nice calculators. Usable (at the very least) to those who have the most basic understanding of lighting and its terminology.

At GE Consumer & Industrial, we want to help lighting professionals and their customers save energy costs. See for yourself the difference these seven simple estimating tools can make.

Calculators:
Simple Energy Estimator – Watts Per Square Foot Estimator – Lighting Layout Estimator – Fixture Replacement Estimator – Dimming System Watts Estimator – Cost of Waiting Estimator – Simple Life-Cycle Cost Estimator – Lighting Calculators Continued

A&K Energy Conservation, Inc. | HQ:15552 US HWY 301, Dade City, FL, 33523 | 800-228-5241 | akenergy.com

Energy Efficient Incentives – Take Advantage

Greg Crew — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 03:58:32 +0000

There are programs at the local, State and Federal levels that encourage energy efficiency with incentives. If your facility(s) plans to do an energy efficient project, do yourself a favor and see what’s available.

For example, you decided to do a lighting retrofit of an office space(s) located in Long Island, NY. Your local utility would be LIPA (Long Island Power Authority). Let’s say from T12 fluorescent to new T8 fluorescent fixtures. Your incentive would be $20 per fixture as long as they meet 80% overall efficiency. Multiply that by 2,000 fixtures.
$40,000 is definitely not something that could be ignored easily.
LIPA commercial lighting prescriptive program pdf

That’s just one utility in one state. Sometimes it may be hard to figure out where to look to get answers for incentives in your area. A great place to look would be DSIRE. The Database of State Incentives for Renewables & Efficiency. It is very thorough and easy to sort out.

“DSIRE is a comprehensive source of information on state, local, utility and federal incentives and policies that promote renewable energy and energy efficiency. Established in 1995 and funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, DSIRE is an ongoing project of the N.C. Solar Center and the Interstate Renewable Energy Council.”

Again, there is nothing to lose by looking and everything to gain.

Your building could have an Energy Star Label

Greg Crew — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 02:55:54 +0000

energystar.gov

While you are trying to earn the LEED building certification, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to include the Energy Star label. Every little bit counts and it doesn’t hurt when the EPA promotes your organization to the press.

Energy Star Engineering Guide

Save More, Use Less, and Earn the ENERGY STAR
Did you know that a building or manufacturing plant can earn the ENERGY STAR label just like your refrigerator? An ENERGY STAR qualified facility meets strict energy performance standards set by EPA and uses less energy, is less expensive to operate, and causes fewer greenhouse gas emissions than its peers. Energy use in commercial buildings and manufacturing plants accounts for nearly half of all energy consumption in the U.S. at a cost of over $200 billion per year, more than any other sector of the economy. Commercial and industrial facilities are also responsible for nearly half of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions which contribute to global warming.

Earn your Energy Star Label – Continued

Electrodeless lamp (Induction Lighting)

Greg Crew — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 03:46:01 +0000

Credit: wikipedia.org

Induction lighting has been around for a while, but it seems that many do not know what it is or how it works. It’s basically a fluorescent lamp that uses an electromagnetic field to generate light instead of a tungsten metal cathode. The clear advantage here is the longevity of the lamp (in this case it’s called a vessel). Some systems are rated for 100,000 hours. This is obscene when compared to a linear fluorescent T8 system. Even with a premium lamp and programmed start ballast, they have a rated life of 46,000 hours or less than half the life of an induction system.

When choosing a lighting system or technology, It really comes down to what fits the best for your needs or budget contraints. Induction lighting is less expensive than a comparable LED system, but more expensive than a linear T8 flourecent system.

Here is a wiki that goes in to a little more detail about induction lighting:

“In contrast with typical electrical lamps that use electrical connections through the lamp envelope to transfer power to the lamp, in electrodeless lamps the power needed to generate light is transferred from the outside of the lamp envelope by means of (electro)magnetic fields. There are three advantages of eliminating electrodes:

Extended lamp life, because the electrodes are usually the limiting factor in lamp life.
The ability to use high efficiency light-generating substances that would react with metal electrodes in normal lamps.
Improved collection efficiency because the source can be made very small without shortening life – a problem in electroded lamps

– Induction Lighting Continued

American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) – Lighting Retrofit

Greg Crew — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 03:38:36 +0000

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) can be funded for energy saving and efficient lighting retrofit projects. It would be worth it to visit recovery.gov to see if your lighting retrofit project qualifies.

How does the Recovery Act work?

Twenty-eight different agencies – such as the Departments of Education; Health and Human Services; and Energy – have been allocated a portion of the $787 billion in Recovery funds. Each agency develops specific plans for how it will spend its Recovery Act funds. The agencies then award grants and contracts to state governments or, in some cases, directly to schools, hospitals, contractors, or other organizations. The agencies are required to file weekly financial reports on how they are spending the money and their specific activities related to Recovery funds. Starting in October 2009, recipients filed their first of regular quarterly reports on how they are spending the Recovery Act funds that they received.

Continue to recovery.gov

Department of Energy’s CALiPER Program

Greg Crew — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 04:04:55 +0000

When A&K Energy Conservation, Inc. meets with our vendors, and the LED topic comes up. There is a concern that the scores of rushed, untested, and unproven LED systems that make it to market will ruin an otherwise excellent technologies perception to the buying public. It is very important to make sure that you are buying a quality LED system. It can be tough to figure out who is good and who is not. The good news is that the Department of Energy has been paying attention to all of this and has developed a program to test the claims of these mfg’s. They call it the CALiPER Program for LEDs (SSL-solid state lighting).

What is CALiPER?
DOE’s SSL Commercially Available LED Product Evaluation and Reporting (CALiPER) program independently tests and provides unbiased information on the performance of commercially available SSL products. The test results guide DOE planning for ENERGY STAR® and technology procurement activities, provide objective product performance information to the public, and inform the development and refinement of standards and test procedures for SSL products.

– Continue

LED Light-Emitting Diode

Greg Crew — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 20:52:57 +0000

High power LEDs from Philips Lumileds Lighting Company mounted on a 21 mm star shaped base metal core PCB (image credit: wikipedia)

LED’s meteoric rise from a status or test light to spacial lighting has been nothing less than astonishing. LED’s (specifically HPLEDs) are emerging as a great new tool in the array of lighting available to the commercial, government and private sectors. As a lighting maintenance contractor, we have had the pleasure installing some of these new fixtures with great effect. The maintenance and energy savings are very attractive attributes when coupled with the right applications.

We have been told by those pioneering LED technology, that this is the future of lighting. Huge efforts and money have been spent advancing LEDs to the point where they are barely recognizable to it’s predecessors.

Wikipedia has what we think, a pretty well written resource for those wanting to brush up on the history and direction of LEDs.

“ light-emitting diode (LED) (pronounced /ˌɛl.iːˈdiː/^[1]) is a semiconductor light source. LEDs are used as indicator lamps in many devices, and are increasingly used for lighting. Introduced as a practical electronic component in 1962,^[2] early LEDs emitted low-intensity red light, but modern versions are available across the visible, ultraviolet and infrared wavelengths, with very high brightness. – Continue

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light-emitting_diode