While LED lighting solutions
still require a longer ROI/payback period than most other lighting technologies,
a growing number of customers continue to opt for the benefits LED Lighting
products suggest – namely, long life rating, minimal maintenance costs, exceptional
dimmability, and exceptional white light brightness.
The higher costs for
LED solutions that make the sale difficult in commercial building projects seem
to be more acceptable to institutional customers where quick payback is a lesser
requirement for the deal. These customers with a long-term view to capital investments
include municipalities, colleges, universities and hospitals.
It makes sense that
a facility manager overseeing a needed lighting upgrade for a school or town
property is far less concerned about a short payback. Afterall, these institutions
are happy to reduce their annual energy operating costs which helps them control
their budget. That is more important in this market than whether the payback
period is two years, or less as is demanded in the commercial building market
– or six, seven or eight years.
Here are some recent
LED sales successes:
1) New England classrooms light up with LED
Babson College, in Wellesley, Massachusettes, renovates several older classrooms
each summer, and last summer’s projects included the college’s first use of
LED lighting for ambient illumination. The solution selected was Lithonia Lighting’s
RTLED system.
“We focused on two 760-square-foot classrooms in Babson Hall and completley
upgraded them,” said C. J. Smith, Babson’s capital projects manager.
The classrooms feature 24 RTLED fixtures that produce up to 50% energy savings
while delivering quality lighting performance. Of critical importance to Babson’s
team is the promise of a significant reduction in maintenance costs thanks to
the RTLED system’s 50,000-hour rated system life without changing lamps or ballasts.
“We were immediately pleased with the color temperature and controllability
of the RTLED systems,” said associate vice president Shelley Kaplan who had
previously not been satisified with the color temperatures and fixture dimensions
of other LED systems.
“This is the first system we evaluated that had the ability to replace our
T8 fluorescents and truly deliver on the promise of LEDs,” said Kaplan. “If
LED lighting can deliver the levels of useful life anticipated – which could
be as many as 10-15 years – the reduced demand for labor required to maintain
the fixtures will in and of itself prove their value.”
2) LED Lighting brightens garage in Dixie
The design-build developer selected to construct an $8 million, 920-space parking
garage adjecent to the Auburn University campus in Auburn, Alabama also turned
to an LED lighting solution for the North Park Parking Deck.
The Auburn project was not only the city’s largest-ever privately built infrastructure,
but also the first garage project completed by construction firm Donald H. Allen
Development, Inc. to use LED lighting. Don Allen, president of the design-build
firm, led the construction project that settled on the installation of 214 PGL7
LED luminaires, as well as other Kim Lighting products.
The development team conducted a payback analysis on the newly developed patent-pending
PGL7 LED fixtures available from Kim Lighting, a pioneer in parking structure
lighting.
“The industry standard
is metal halide, but for a lot of other reasons we went with LED, which offered
a very promising cost-benefit curve,” said project leader Greg Darden.
While the LED fixtures had a higher initial cost, the LED system carries a
5-year warranty with light source life rated to last more than 50,000 hours,
as compared to only 10,000 to 24,000 hours rated for comparable high-intensity
discharge (HID) luminaires such as metal halide and high-pressure sodium.
The decision was based on the greater energy efficieny and longer life of the
LED system which would reduce daytime electrical consumption by nearly 45% and
nightime consumption by more than 50%.