Lighting: The Easiest Energy Saving Retrofit

RENEW Energy partners specializes in helping fund your energy saving retrofits for your commercial, industrial and institutional buildings. There are many different technologies we install to make your buildings more efficient and reduce your energy bill. One of the best places to start is with an energy saving LED lighting retrofit.

A Brief History of Lighting: 

Illumination has come along was since 1880, when the Edison Electric Company started marketing their newest product, a lightbulb with a carbonized bamboo filament. Eventually, the bamboo filaments changed to tungsten, and after a while the first incandescent bulbs were invented, which began to be distributed in the 1940s.

Modern incandescent bulbs, like their predecessors, are not energy efficient – less than 10% of electrical power supplied to the bulb is converted into visible light. The remaining energy is lost as heat. These low-efficiency incandescent bulbs are still commonly used today because they are widely available, have a low first cost, are easily incorporated into electrical systems, and have a low voltage operation in battery powered devices.

These incandescent bulbs could easily be the ones lighting your buildings. If that is the case, 90% of your lighting bill is being wasted! The good news is, a lighting retrofit is one of simplest ways to increase your energy efficiency, save money on your energy bills, and lower your carbon footprint. RENEW Energy Partners is here to provide the funding you need to do so.

The Future of Energy Saving Lighting:

A great energy savings retrofit starts with lighting. The best way to reduce your lighting costs is to switch to LED lighting (LED stands for light-emitting diode). Although once known mainly for indicator and traffic lights, LEDs are today’s most energy-efficient and rapidly developing lighting technology. LEDs use up to 90% less energy and last up to 25 times longer than traditional incandescent bulbs.

LED lights are such a great energy saving retrofit that most if not all new buildings use LED lights. However, 1,000’s of buildings have yet to convert. Energy-saving LED retrofitting is great because they have great payback (usually less than a few years), are now a proven technology with little performance risk, and they offer significant maintenance savings since they last 50 to 100 times longer than incandescent bulbs.

If you are exploring an energy savings retrofits start by looking up, if you don’t see LED lights than that is where you should start.

Once you have installed new bulbs, the next step to make your building more energy efficient is to install lighting controls. The technology varies, but these are effectively a dimmer switch. Instead of only two options for lighting (on and off), building operators can have lights running anywhere on the gradient between 1%-100% use). This allows for more efficient lighting settings, in addition to more efficient bulbs. In fact, using dimmable LED lights doubles the life of your bulb, saving on energy costs even further.

Another way to enhance your energy saving retrofit is to install motion sensors. Motion sensors allow your lighting to turn on when they detect movement and to turn off if they have not detected movement for a while. This helps save energy by automatically shutting of lights in empty rooms. The same effect is achieved with lighting timers if your building runs on a regular schedule.

Dimmers, motion sensors, and lighting timers are controlled using a smart lighting system. When these are incorporated into your building management system, they allow you to control the lighting for your entire building on one screen. In addition, some smart lighting systems have analytics tools so you can monitor your energy use in real time and compare it to your past energy use.

Implement Energy Saving Lighting with an Energy Service Agreement

No matter how you decide to increase your energy efficiency and decrease your carbon footprint, these kinds of project require funding. In order to fund an energy efficiency project for your building(s), RENEW Energy Partners offers an energy service agreement (ESA). The Energy Service Agreement:

• Is an off-balance sheet transaction. You do not own the asset or carry it on your balance sheet.
• RENEW provides preventive and corrective maintenance in the service agreement
• Your payment to RENEW will be based on the energy savings confirmed once the system is operational.

Unlike a lease or a loan, which are on balance sheet, do not include maintenance, and may or may not deliver energy savings, the service agreement provides all of the above and then some:

• Executing a service agreement is fast – once the project is scoped by an energy professional (and we can recommend one), you execute a simple service agreement contract and RENEW will fund the project.
• Executing a service agreement frees up your capital budget for your other priorities, allowing you to focus on growing your core business.
• Executing a service agreement now means your net cash flows are higher than waiting and doing it yourself in a year.
• And finally – executing a service agreement means flexibility. Perhaps you buy another building or look at additional efficiency measures–with a one-page addendum to your existing ESA you can have those new lights, HVAC, and controls at your new building, and you simultaneously reduce your operating expense!

 The RENEW Energy Service Agreement allows businesses to focus on what they do best, while ensuring that their facilities are performing at their peak with brand new, and high-efficiency equipment. In this current climate of cost control and resource allocation, the energy service agreement is the perfect solution to help businesses meet sustainability goals and keep facilities in top condition. Reach out to RENEW and talk to us about financing your energy saving retrofits today.