Lighting retrofit benefits - what are they?

At Aztec Electrical we are here to assist your lighting retrofit projects to maximize the short term and long term energy benefits.

Tax Incentives and Rebates
The Energy Trust of Oregon provides cash incentives and rebates for qualifies energy projects. At Aztec Electrical we are a Trade Ally - qualified to help you determine the best lighting project for your home or business that meets the Energy Trust specifications.

Improved Safety
High quality lighting can improve facility safety, reduce quality incidents, improve productivity and increase occupant satisfaction. Newer technologies often have better lighting-quality characteristics, such as improved color, reduced flicker and greater light output.

Reduced Energy Costs
Energy-efficient lighting upgrades represent the highest return on investment (ROI) of any single-technology project, with an average ROI of 45 percent. These upgrades pay for themselves in as little as 2.2 years and the payback continues over the lifetime of the system through reduced energy and maintenance costs.

Improved Performance and Productivity
A recent study found that one in four workers experienced a loss in work time based on vision problems and discomfort caused by poor lighting. The study found improvements in the average office lighting system can result in a 3-5 percent gain in employee productivity.

Reduce Your Carbon Footprint / Social Responsibility
By consuming less electricity, your facility can reduce its electrical load, thus reducing the demand and associated emissions from "off-site" power generation.

What is a lighting retrofit?

Rising electricity costs, environmental regulations and concerns about employee well being have businesses, consumers and government agencies looking for an energy strategy that will not only save money, but will add business value into the future.

A lighting retrofit is a simple way to make your building's lighting more energy efficient. Over time, these energy savings can be significant enough to not only pay for the equipment, but may produce a return on investment. Lighting retrofits not only improve the quality of light, but also result in less heat in the building envelope reducing HVAC run times. Combine this with increased longevity of lamp life and possible utility incentives to help reduce project costs, and you see the return of investments (ROI) can be significant.

With lighting accounting for more than 25 percent of the energy used in most facilities, increased efficiency can make a big difference to your monthly energy bill.

Some examples of lighting retrofit ....

• Swapping out lamps and ballasts (energy efficiency coupled with improved lighting quality)
• Retrofit fixtures that install in minutes. These simple installations allow you to use the existing fixture housing and wiring so ceiling tiles don't have to be removed. 
• Upgrading the internal fixture components with energy efficient replacements can reduce your energy use by as much as 67 percent. 
• Adding or upgrading lighting controls to improve the efficiency of current systems. Some controls are wireless.

Call or email us at Aztec Electrical to talk about a lighting retrofit at your home or office.

Energy Costs Reduced 67% In Parking Garage Using Retrofit

San Mateo County drives down electricity costs in parking garage with efficient T8 lamps and wireless lighting controls.

San Mateo County cut lighting energy use by 67% through a lighting retrofit with wireless controls at the parking garage serving the County’s administrative campus. With six levels and over 900 parking spaces occupied daily, San Mateo County’s County Center Parking Garage supports the commutes of hundreds of employees and visitors, and houses a fleet of County vehicles. Unfortunately, with most of their inefficient high pressure sodium (HPS) lamps operating 20 to 24 hours per day, seven days a week, paying the monthly $46,000 electric bill for this facility was no joyride.

Building type: 6-level parking garage

Size: 312,150 square feet, 904 parking spaces

Project: 279 HPS fixtures (150W) replaced with bi-level linear fluorescent fixtures (44-73W)

Annual energy savings: 248,200 kWh

Peak load reduction: 22.3 kW

Simple payback: 3.8 years

Send an email or call us at Aztec Electrical to learn more about an efficient lighting design that will help you save money and reduce your energy costs at home or at your business.

Lighting Maintenance Case Study & ROI

Parking Lot After LED installation

Parking Lot Lighting with LEDs: T.J.Maxx Plaza

CBT Development, the developer and property owner of a retail shopping center anchored
by T.J.Maxx in Manchester, New Hampshire, was incurring unusually high costs for parking lot maintenance from frequent lamp replacement and determined that poor power quality was the cause.

Already preparing to replace the plaza’s 25-year-old luminaires, the owner began looking for alternative lighting systems that might offer a more robust light source. During this search, the plaza architect learned about the U.S. Department of Energy GATEWAY Demonstration Program and the Commercial Building Energy Alliances (CBEA) LED Site Lighting Performance Specification and contacted Pacific Northwest National Laboratory to learn more about both.

The owner was particularly interested in occupancy sensors, which would offer the additional benefit of reducing energy use when the plaza is unoccupied, while still providing enough lighting for visibility. Because occupancy sensors are rarely used in parking lots, this installation presented a unique learning opportunity of significant interest to the GATEWAY program.

In this project, a total of 28 (twenty-two 400W [lamp rated power] high-pressure sodium and six 400W metal halide) luminaires were replaced with 25 LED luminaires (120 LEDs per luminaire) manufactured by BetaLED ®, with each luminaire controlled by an integral occupancy sensor that varies operation between high and low light output settings.

The LED product achieved an estimated payback in this installation of about three years, due to the combination of high electricity ($0.14/kWh) and maintenance costs incurred by the conventional products at this location.

At Aztec Electrical we will help you get your lighting retrofit project optimally designed and installed correctly. Click here to send us an email.

Lighting Retrofit Benefits

A lighting retrofit is a simple way to make your building's lighting more energy efficient.

Over time, these energy savings can be significant enough to not only pay for the equipment, but may produce a return on investment.

Lighting retrofits improve the quality of light, and also result in less heat in the building envelope reducing HVAC run times.

Combine this with increased longevity of lamp life and possible utility incentives to help reduce project costs, and one can easily see the return of investments can be significant.

Rising electricity costs, environmental regulations and concerns about employee well being have businesses, consumers and government agencies looking for an energy strategy that will not only save money, but will add business value into the future. With lighting accounting for more than 25 percent of the energy used in most facilities, increased efficiency can make a big difference to your monthly energy bill.

Contact Aztec Electrical for questions or to schedule a free energy assessment of your building.

Energy rebate: home energy audit

Our team of courteous, experienced electricians will work with you to answer your questions and make sure your project gets done on time and on budget while respecting you and your home.

We can walk you through the process of obtaining an energy rebate from the Energy Trust of Oregon.

Below is a list of different home energy solutions to choose from.....

- Energy Efficiency
- Weatherization
- Heating
- Water Heating and Treatment
- Appliances
- Lighting
- Energy-Efficient Shower heads

Use our contact form to send us your question - click here.

LED's: a lighting retrofit solution

The opportunity in the LED retrofit market is enormous, and the missteps made in rushing other energy-efficient lighting to market (e.g., the compact fluorescent lamp) are less likely to slow market growth this time around. Experts say the science behind solid-state lighting, its quick return on investment, and ease of retrofit installation will result in a win for manufacturers, contractors, end-users and, ultimately, the environment.


The Department of Energy (DOE) predicts that LEDs will become the dominant light source in the United States by 2025. Rather than a market share based on dollars, the DOE calculates market share based on lumen hours, or demand for light over time. By that measure, the DOE predicts LEDs will have 59 percent of market share in a little more than a decade. That’s a tall order, but should it happen, U.S. lighting energy consumption will be sliced by nearly one-half, according to the DOE.

The DOE’s study didn’t focus on LED lighting retrofit per se, but it is clear that a great deal of the low-hanging fruit lies in the replacement of fluorescent lamps in commercial and institutional settings. Regulations have eliminated a majority of magnetic T12 lamp ballasts as well as the majority of linear T12 lamps. But according to the DOE, at last count, more than 500 million T12 lamps were in operation, including approximately 400 million 4-foot lamps. Obviously, there are other fluorescent options ahead of the LED as replacements for those T12s—namely the T8 and T5—but LED manufacturers are slowly applying this technology to a range of traditional lighting sources.


“The growth market for replacement of ceiling troffers is humongous. There are 2 billion sockets waiting to be filled in commercial settings, including office buildings, universities and hospitals,” said John Casadonte, marketing manager for lighting at Cree Inc., a company that manufactures lighting products and semiconductors for power and radio frequency (RF) applications.


Forget the T12 fluorescent. Casadonte said LEDs should leapfrog newer products like the T8. 


“Some universities are just now considering replacing T12s with T8s. It’s up to us to convince them that the newer technology is in their best interest,” he said.


While the LED market, as a percentage of the installed base is still quite small, companies that manufacture retrofit LED systems are making big bets on the future of the LED. Rob Freitag is vice president of marketing at EYE Lighting International, a company that has traditionally focused on metal halide, high-pressure sodium, and mercury lamps for outdoor applications (including parking lots, loading docks, and sporting facilities) as well as for large interiors (such as warehouses or big-box retail stores). 


There are tens of millions of lamps ripe for replacement by LEDs, Freitag said, adding that, “The LED is our greatest opportunity for growth in the coming years. They will become the majority of our lamp sales over the next decade.” 


Adapted from an article at http://www.ecmag.com.

Lighting Retrofits = Innovative Payoffs

Advances in lighting technology have produced a variety of new retrofitting methods and components that are transforming existing high-volume facilities and transportation infrastructure.

By their very nature, retrofits are designed to enhance performance and provide significant energy savings. Yet some of the most beneficial features of today's lighting upgrades may lie in updated circuitry designed to meet modern power demands for illumination that provides safer, more secure environments for occupants.

<< Aztec Electrical: we provide residential electrical services and commercial electrical services - click here from more information.

Over the years, the combination of growing lighting consumption and aging structures has allowed retrofitting to become the driving force behind utility efficiency efforts, with the emphasis on commercial facilities.

Offices, retail and warehouses are the largest consumers of energy in the United States, and lighting accounts for more than 40 percent of the commercial sector's overall electricity consumption according to the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy in Washington, D.C.

 With increased electricity costs and the growing interest in energy conservation, facility managers have turned to new lighting technologies to provide high-quality, energy-efficient lighting options for multiple applications. These products include occupancy sensors, dimmers with automatic shutoff controls, ceramic metal halides, inductive lamp systems, one-lamp linear fluorescent fixtures, high-intensity T5HO fluoresces and super T8 lamp systems.

For instance, lighting manufacturers estimate a new electronic T8 lamp and ballast system burns approximately 30 to 50 percent less energy, operates cooler and reduces maintenance costs. In addition, it can generate up to 20 percent more light with improved color rendering. A typical payback on the newer technology is one to three years based on annual operating hours and kilowatt-per-hour cost.


Adapted from an article at Electrical Contractor: http://www.ecmag.com