Calculating the savings of lighting retrofits for commercial buildings is an important exercise to undertake when trying to figure out how to allocate budget to save energy. This article is presented as a series of power point slides that walk you through the essential steps of conducting the full calculations.
In this example of the calculations for the commercial building building lighting retrofit, we are assuming the following building characteristics.
In order to conduct the calculations, you need to know some specific information on the existing lighting system in the building. This slide show you some basic assumptions.
To carry through later calculation steps, we have researched the average performance of T12 lamps from major lighting manufacturers.
In order to get a full picture of the performance, similar was conducted to understand the performance of commercially available ballasts. This is important because in commercial lighting systems, the actual light bulb and the ballast that houses them both consume electricity.
The next few slides show you how to calculate the energy consumption from the existing lighting system.
The next few slides show you how to calculate the cost of the existing lighting system.
In this example, there are other higher performing lighting systems available.
The next few slides show you how to calculate the energy consumption of the proposed new lighting system.
The next few slides show you the cost of the new lighting system.
These slides show you the saving from the lighting retrofit of the commercial building.
That is a considerable amount of savings for this one building. The following slides show you the payback of this investment.
In addition to simple paybacks, there are often incentives available from utilities for projects like this.
Here are other options that the building owner would have to improve performance.
These example calculations have shown how to calculate the savings of lighting retrofits for commercial buildings. In this specific case, the payback is very compelling, and barring unknown circumstances, this would likely be a smart retrofit to move forward with.
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