Energy Efficient Lighting Doesnt Have To Mean High Expenditure

Words by Jo Reeves

Commercial enterprises are always looking for ways to slash energy bills, but often big long term savings come hand in hand with high initial investment. Lighting is an area in which many facilities managers already have an active role and where they now have the ability to show clients major savings at remarkably low cost.

Commercial lighting presents a huge expenditure for most buildings, particularly ones that are in use for extended hours – and often 24 hours a day. Most existing luminaires are inefficient in terms of energy use, but completely replacing these fittings would be a huge expenditure for most companies.

Some 7 years in development, new ‘Save It Easy®’ retrofit adaptors enable fluorescent lighting users to re-lamp with high efficiency T5 and T8 tubes in existing fittings, negating the need for the huge investment involved with replacing less efficient existing luminaires to gain the huge energy saving opportunities associated with this.

Energy savings range from 26% to 56% depending on application and plug-in installation avoids the need for highly qualified staff and the engineering problems of new attachments and re-wiring. Backed by a two-year no quibble guarantee, Save It Easy® units also qualify for the Carbon Trust interest-free loan scheme for SME clients.

Users will benefit from extended life with new technology lamps. For example, the GE Starcote T5 lamp offers an efficient Iife of 22,000 hours compared with the average conventional T5 tube efficient life of around 6-8,000 hours.

Low initial cost and simplicity of installation give these units a payback of less than a year in higher usage applications. And ‘Save It Easy®’ units have the full endorsement of GE Consumer and Industrial Lighting, who have subjected them to rigorous testing at their Budapest HQ facilities..

Kevin Cox, Managing Director of ECSL explains the motives behind the development in new lighting technology: “The drivers towards energy efficiency put in place by UK government mean that business is increasingly being forced to take stock of its energy use – and then there’s the fact of steeply rising energy prices which seem unlikely to fall again. While legislation may not yet categorically enforce the use of the installation of energy efficient lighting, the Government’s strict emission targets ensure that they will do all they can to encourage the use of this kind of technology.”




Case studies

ROYAL SURREY COUNTY HOSPITAL
Egerton Road, Guildford, Surrey GU2 7XX

The Project
A pilot installation of 980 ‘Save It Easy®’ units to replace 4ft T8 lamps (36 watts) with 4ft T5 lamps (28 watts) was recently carried out in areas within the hospital which are
typically lit 24 hours a day throughout the year.

The lamps were mounted in 245 quad units within common areas such as waiting
rooms and corridors.

The project was initiated and overseen by Mr Gary Mountjoy, Royal Surrey Hospital
Estates Manager (EEM).

The Savings
The reduction in electricity consumption from the project is 137,356 kWh per annum,
representing an annual cost saving of £6,730 and annual CO2 emissions saving of 59 tonnes.

Payback Period
On the basis of the savings shown above, and taking into account both the product and installation costs, the payback period for the project is 1.21 years

COMPANIES HOUSE
Crown Way, Cardiff, CF14 3UZ

The Project
To use ‘Save It Easy®’ units to replace 600 5ft T8 lamps (58 watts) with 5ft T5 lamps
(35watts) in a multi-storey car park lit for 12 hours per day for 6 days per week.
The project was initiated and overseen by Mr Gareth Leek, Companies House
Environmental Manager.

Implementation
Following an initial evaluation it was decided that the superior light output of T5 lamps and their longer efficient operating life compared to the existing lamps made it possible to reduce to 430 the number of lamps installed.

The Savings
As a result of replacing 430 T8 lamps with the equivalent number of T5s, annual
electricity consumption was reduced 53,127 kWh. This reduced energy costs by
£3,719 and CO2 emissions by 23 tonnes.

Having entirely eliminated 170 T8 lamps, an additional annual energy saving of 45,827kWh was achieved, reducing costs by a further £3,208 and CO2 emissions by
20 tonnes. Together the savings totaled 66%.

Payback Period
On the basis of the combined savings above, payback period for this project
is estimated at 0.74 years.

Reproduced by kind permission of Sustainable FM (Abbey Publishing)