Advocates of clean technology have long advised LED retrofits for turning your business greener, but they don’t always mention a secondary benefit: the conservation of electricity. Buildings use up about 40 percent of the world’s power every day, and anything you can do to get that number down will give you a positive impact on your bottom line.
Mercy Philadelphia Hospital installed LED exit lights, photo light controls, and other LED retrofits, and they’re now saving over $20,000 a year in energy costs. You don’t have to own a hospital or other large business to see savings and energy conservation with LED retrofits. Even small changes can make a noticeable difference on your bottom line.
Holiday Decorations
The increase in your power bill in December isn’t completely due to the lower temperatures. Many businesses make a point of decorating their buildings for the holidays. Depending on the amount of lights and ornaments you use, you can save a significant amount of energy for the month by using LED lights instead of the traditional incandescent variety.
Older style lights use about 40 watts per string, while LED lights are much lower, using about 4.8. Your total savings depend on your Christmas cheer and how much you want to celebrate with the neighborhood, but typical savings can run from $10 in the hundreds of dollars for the month of December.
Outdoor Lighting
Apartment complexes, nursing homes, and small business can all reduce their energy usage by installing LED retrofits into their existing outdoor lighting schemes. Buildings with landscape feature lighting, lights along pathways, spotlights to illuminate walkways and expanses of grass, and motion sensor anti-crime devices can all benefit from being changed over to a set of LED bulbs.
Changing out 200 typical incandescent bulbs can save enough energy in one year to power the average home in the United States for that same year. In addition, since LED bulbs last about 20 times as long as incandescent varieties, you’ll save time and money on labor for changing burnt out bulbs.
Parking Lot Lighting
Many parking lots suffer from dark corners and edges while the center is almost too bright underneath the traditional lights. Switching to LED parking lot lights can solve this problem, as the light from these bulbs diffuses more evenly underneath the area in which they’re installed. Switching out your bulbs to LEDs will give you more uniform lighting to increase lot safety, as well as saving a significant amount of energy on a monthly basis.
You can find additional savings by installing bi-level controls on your LED lights. These lights run normally at a dimmer level, then brighten up considerably when motion detectors sense movement in the lot beneath. Your lot will still be constantly lit, unlike with typical motion sensors, but you’ll save energy by not having the lights at full power all night long.
Indoors
You may see the largest savings of all by doing LED retrofits inside your business. Businesses across the country are seeing amazing energy savings simply by switching out their old traditional bulbs for more efficient LED versions. GM’s Lordstown, Ohio, complex is currently undergoing the world’s largest LED retrofit project. With about a third of the project done, GM has already seen an 80 percent drop in energy usage in one factory in the complex.
It’s doubtful that you have as many lights in your business as GM does in theirs, but you can perform the same LED retrofit on a smaller scale and still see the same type of energy savings.
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