Posted by Jay Boucher
on 04/8/2011
I am so tired of these so-called ESCO’s and holier-than-thou companies that claim to be the next best thing since the sheet rock screw to businesses who want to do the right thing by reducing their energy consumption and associated carbon footprint. I’m not trying to say that they are all evil, hit & run artists - but I can’t help but think that they are more the norm than the exception. We propose and do a lot of lighting retrofits for commercial and industrial concerns and our approach is to the provide the customers with a solution that not only meets or exceeds their goals for energy reduction but also leaves them with a much better system than they had when we arrived. This means that if they had a terrible lighting system when we surveyed the facility, they would have a considerably better lighting system when we completed our proposed solution. I have seen way too many projects where the customer was looking to do the right thing only to be victimized by the ‘low hanging fruit bandits’.
Why would anyone with half a conscience go into a facility on the premise of an energy consultant/specialist, see that the place has a horrible lighting system and simply propose the down and dirty, take the money and run, low hanging fruit approach to retrofitting their lighting systems? I guess the answer is pretty obvious……….. that it is the easy money and more often than not the customer is simply looking for the biggest bang for their buck – or best ROI so that certain individuals can pound themselves on their chests and brag about the 2 year ROI they just manage to negotiate while the ESCO is laughing all the way to the bank.
So what if their lighting system was a joke to begin with, was way over-lit and everyone left at the end of the day exhausted and blinded by the light? The old lighting system that has been in there for the last 30 years is now drawing 30% less power than it used to and everybody is happy……….. WRONG!!! A bad lighting system that is just more efficient is nothing more than a more efficient bad lighting system.
Another sad aspect of this equation is that often times the local utility company is financing a good portion of the lighting retrofit. All they are looking at is wattage reduction and subsequently are subsidizing these low hanging fruit bandit operations.
I just toured a major medical facility that has recently gone through some stages of a lighting retrofit program with considerable incentives provided by the local utility. The place is way over-lit in general and loaded with 2 x 2 recessed fluorescent fixtures having the ‘wonderful’ U-lamps that have been converted from T12 to T8 lamps. Bravo!!!! Now the epitome of low hanging fruit specialists is to retrofit the 2x2 fixture with electronic ballast and T8 lamps and hit the road- which is exactly what happened here. It would have been such a great opportunity to get rid of these ‘U-lamps’ and provide this medical facility with a lighting solution that was far superior to the one they inherited with the 20 year old design of the facility…………but no- that would have involved more time and effort on somebody’s part.
There are many locations throughout this facility where 3 lamp fixtures could have been reduced to 1 lamp fixtures while still providing more adequate levels of light to the prevailing applications. Instead of turning off two thirds of fixtures in hallways which creates ugly dark spots and uneven lighting throughout these areas, fixtures could be converted to one-lamp units resulting in nice even light levels in these areas while still saving a ton of energy. In a large facility like this one, reducing 3 lamp fixtures to 1 lamp fixtures has a huge impact on the maintenance staff that is responsible for changing these lamps. Think about this for ½ second and you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to equate that reducing 3 lamp fixtures to 1 lamp fixtures results in a maintenance factor reduction of 66% since the quantity of lamps in fixtures have been reduced by 2/3’s.
Of course you just don’t go into a 3 lamp fixture and stick one lamp in there and call it close enough! You need to apply the proper volumetric retrofit kits to allow the fixtures to provide proper light levels and light distribution. This is easily accomplished with the right tools but is a few steps beyond the hit and run approach. This also results in a lengthier ROI but a much better lighting system and long term solution for the lighting system.
Volumetric lighting is the new craze today and it should be. This principle is all about putting the right ‘volume’ of light in the work space as opposed to putting too much light in the space. People spend 90% of their time staring at monitors today and the big difference today is that the graphics and resolution of these monitors is far superior to those of years ago. The old deep cell parabolic fixtures were designed to drive the light down to the desktops when the early stages of computer monitors – or VDT’s first emerged. The graphics on these machines was atrocious and they needed more light because of that. Now when you compare the old VDT’s to today’s monitors you will see a very dramatic difference. The graphics and resolution of today’s monitors are phenomenal, enough so that only a minimal amount of light is required – or desired by anyone who is spending 90% of their time working in front of a monitor.
