Reaching Breakeven With Little Delay
Two case studies indicate that energy-efficient lighting upgrades can result in a rapid financial payback.
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
By Don Talend
When planning a major marketing tactic, it always helps to calculate just how much the new endeavor will impact the organization’s bottom line—and how quickly. Such was the case when Ampro Sports Inc., Primos, PA, recently upgraded the lighting at an athletic fieldhouse it had built in order to grow awareness of its brand and forge stronger bonds with customers. The upgrade to a new energy-efficient lighting system was expected to deliver a nearly immediate return on investment. Ampro’s experience is a good example of the impact that increasing lighting efficiency can have on an organization’s finances.
For 35 years, the company has provided sportswear to athletic teams as well as T-shirts and promotional items for organizations. According to Gary Huddell, the company’s president, the market for team uniforms changed during the 1990s, when offshore manufacturers began to dominate the market for large-volume orders. As a result, Ampro still met demand for relatively small order volumes, but no longer fully utilized its 100,000-square-foot production facility, half of which is used for production and about one-quarter of which is devoted to a warehouse addition.
“We found that, although the warehouse had plenty of product in it, we really weren’t utilizing it to the extent that we should have,” says Huddell.
Back in 1996, Huddell had an idea that would both address the utilization problem and give the company a marketing boost: use some of the facility floor space for a sports facility. The idea came from one of the company’s regional sales representatives, Huddell recalls.
He adds that the existing facility lent itself to an athletic field. “The way we configured the facility, it had poles, but each section was about 12,500 square feet,” he says. “We knew we could open up space as a playing field.”
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Photo: Waldmann Lighting
Waldmann Lighting Amadea in the Medical Center of Aurora renovation |
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| Photo: Waldmann Lighting |
Such a move was expected to strengthen bonds with customers and grow awareness of the Ampro brand.
“For us, it was just a natural,” says Huddell. “We’re actively involved with local teams, and this gives those teams the option, when it’s snowing outside, to call Ampro and ask for the facility for two hours.” The Philadelphia Area Disk Alliance—an organization consisting of leagues in sports such as disc golf and ultimate Frisbee—is another major user of the facility.
In sales and marketing, perception is reality. So Huddell paid particular attention to ensuring that the playing surface and lighting provided the athletic teams using the facility with a positive experience. The first order of business was settling on a quality playing surface.
“If we were going to try and build the space, obviously the space was an issue, the netting was an issue, padding was an issue, but the floor was the biggest issue,” he says. “The lighting was probably secondary to the quality of the turf.” A cushioned nylon monofilament fiber turf product designed for both fast play and durability, called Puregrass, was installed on the field.
Next came a decision on lighting. The facility was equipped with what was considered state-of-the-art lighting back then: 400-W metal halide fixtures. Huddell notes that both adequate illumination and energy efficiency were priorities, so he researched stadium lighting. He told his sales representative that he wanted daylight-like illumination 4 or 5 feet from the ground. This request resulted from a concern about lacrosse matches, which are characterized by a heavy ball hurtling through the air at high speeds—and roughly head height.
“One of the things that some indoor practice fields are notorious for is poor lighting or poor turf,” points out Huddell. “In our minds, we wanted to make sure we didn’t come out of the gate with poor lighting and/or poor turf. We were afraid to make an investment in a light that was fairly expensive as far as face value cost per fixture, unless we knew for a fact that it was going to work.”
In terms of energy efficiency, the fixtures were some of the best available at the time, Huddell notes. The field illumination they provided was adequate; however, they created a slight humming noise, and the bulbs and ballasts needed to be replaced a little too often for Huddell’s liking. Huddell points out that the company’s third largest expense is lighting.
In mid-2009, the decision was made to upgrade both the quality and energy efficiency of the facility’s lighting. According to Huddell, another major aspect of the decision was fixture durability. LEDs and T5s were considered but, ultimately, not selected. A relatively large number of LEDs would be necessary to illuminate the field, Huddell recalls.
The T5s would have to be replaced about once every two years, he adds. “The T5s were, in my mind, a difficult solution, because we netted the area under the lights, and we didn’t want to have to cut through the netting and replace the bulbs—that’s incredibly time-consuming and expensive.”
Full-spectrum Lighting Chosen
Eventually, the 250-W EverLast Induction Lighting EHB-GC-250-W from Full Spectrum Solutions Inc. was chosen.
“One of the things the EverLast light does is provide full-spectrum lighting,” says Huddell. “It’s diffused—it’s not a beam of light, but overall light that really fills the space—it blends it all together.”
In addition to providing the desired light quality, the new fixtures promised to be much more cost-effective to operate than the existing metal halides.
“When we looked at what the lighting would do, and the tax advantages of installing and investing in the lighting, there were multiple factors to the decision,” says Huddell. “One is that these lights last for about 100,000 hours, so they are not going to burn out, and I don’t have to get up into the netting to get to them.”
Suncoast Solar Power/USA Energy Management LLC was hired as the lighting provider. The company is known for an energy-efficient lighting retrofit at the Yuengling Brewery in Pottsville, PA—as discussed at www.distributedenergy.com/DE/Articles/7780.aspx—and its partners, Nicholas Ferraioli and David Cooper, have formed a new venture, the USA Green Energy Mall, www.usagreenenergymall.com, a “virtual storefront” for building owners interested in equipping facilities with green lighting.
Thirty fixtures were specified for the fieldhouse, and 15 more were specified for additional warehouse space to be utilized in future capacity expansion. Also replaced were three 250-W exterior lights, with three 100-W induction floodlights, and three 250-W wall packs, with three 100-W induction wall packs. According to a 10-year energy and maintenance savings projection by Ferraioli, the new lighting system will reduce the power density level per square foot from 1.33 W to 0.55 W, and save Ampro a total of more than $292,500. The expected annual energy cost for the new system over that period is about $5,127, compared with about $27,232 for the existing system—yielding a savings of about $22,105. Over 10 years, the projected energy savings is about $221,047. Significantly, the new lighting will allow the facility to qualify for a federal Efficient Commercial Buildings Tax Deduction of 60 cents per square foot, which was established by H.R. 6, the Energy Policy Act of 2005, and added to United States Code Title 26, Internal Revenue Code Sec. 179D, for a total of $14,580. This credit is anticipated to increase the total financial valuation of the lighting retrofit to $307,157.
“Now we know that we’re saving a lot of energy,” says Huddell. “We know that the lights are going to last 100,000 hours, and we’re excited about that, too.”
Regarding the warehouse lighting, “We got the light level quality to where we wanted it to be—we added full-spectrum lighting, which is supposed to be much healthier for people when they’re indoors all winter long. I can’t say that my warehouse guys will be running around a lot more happily, but when you click those lights on, number one, they don’t hum like the other lights. They come on instantly, and they heat up in a minute or two. With the metal halides, you’d see nothing for a couple of minutes.”
Huddell fully understands that, adjusting for inflation, the initial cost of the new system was probably higher than that of the existing system. However, using Ferraioli’s cost-of-ownership estimate of about $70,425 for the entire system over 10 years, a payback period of about one calendar quarter, is a reasonable expectation.
“The lighting doesn’t represent the bulk of what we use in terms of energy, but I knew that the investment that I was making in the lighting was offset by the savings,” says Huddell. “The huge thing is the maintenance issue. You can’t undervalue that sort of a savings. You’ve got a high-reach truck and it takes two people to get up and down and work on the lights. We’ve sealed those lights with a net, and we don’t expect to have to work on them for 10 years.
“There were so many compelling arguments for me to make this choice,” continues Huddell. “Eliminating the hum, the durability—there were so many compelling factors, that it wasn’t a difficult decision.”
Retrofit Assists Hospital’s Electrical Savings
A major aspect of remodeling the fourth floor of the Medical Center of Aurora, CO, in late 2009, was upgrading the lighting system in terms of both illumination quality and energy efficiency. The 30,000-square-foot floor, which houses the trauma, neurological, and orthopedics medical specialty units, was upgraded with 131 specialized medical lighting fixtures that are expected to significantly contribute to an overall savings of $90,000 that the project is expected to yield in electrical costs
in 2010.
Greg Menke, the center’s director of facilities management, notes that his experience as a custom homebuilder was useful in focusing on hospital lighting energy efficiency since he began working at the hospital in early 2008.
“I was fairly knowledgeable about energy and consumption,” he says. “When I came to the hospital, one of the things I started doing was replacing all of our old fluorescent four-bulb light fixtures with two-bulb T8s with inverted reflectors. Not only did I get more light, but I also reduced energy costs by about half. I’ve gone through a pretty systematic program of changing out probably 75% of the lights in the hospital.
“When we went through this remodel, I did it with the goal of using LED technology where it made sense, as well as efficient lighting of other sources,” he adds.
Menke also decided that the fixtures above the patient beds needed upgrading. The existing fixtures, which served as combination room, exam, and general reading lights, were deemed unacceptably expensive, difficult to access for maintenance, and cumbersome to operate.
“One of the criteria that I was looking for was simplicity, not only from a maintenance point of view, but also installation and also from a care point of view,” says Menke. “I needed some kind of exam light and some kind of room light that gave us options for patient reading, general lighting, and for some uplighting. I used LEDs specifically for exam lighting—I put three in the ceiling, but they’re not on all the time.”
In addition to having three Prescolite #D6LED-120V-6D9-WT fixtures installed in each patient room ceiling on the fourth floor, the facility selected Waldmann Lighting Company’s Derungs Medical Lighting Dlite amadea fixtures for other applications in patient rooms such as wall and reading lighting. Menke reports that the fixtures meet the desired daylight simulation on the remodeled floor, which is intended to improve patients’ comfort and ability to heal quickly. The lights’ reflector technology is built into a relatively small footprint and designed to reduce luminance on the walls for more consistent lighting and lessen glare, reflection, and shadows.
“My intent all along was to create more of a residential environment,” he says. “We’re trying to warm the place up with colors and use technologies like lighting and other materials to make it feel more hotel-like and more residential, and less like an institution. I think we were able to accomplish that.”
In order to achieve the desired feel, Menke says, he focused on the lights’ Kelvin ratings. “I was trying to have a more consistent Kelvin rating on all of our lights,” he points out. “I think we accomplished that. I tried to get more of a daylight feel in all of our rooms with our Kelvin ratings. It’s been proven through some research that people heal better in more of a daylighted environment.” The facility chose 4100K, which provides a relatively bright, white light.
Menke acknowledges that improved patient comfort and recovery through improved lighting quality is difficult to measure.
“There are so many factors, and you’re dealing with people who have multiple issues,” he says. “To the degree that we can use lighting to increase depth perception and awareness, I think we accomplished that very well. I can’t say for sure that it’s had a positive impact, but the lighting of the rooms gives us exactly the dynamic we want.”
Light Output Up, Energy Use Down
Just as importantly, the new lighting systems are more cost-effective because they are more efficient, Menke argues. “Between the lighting systems, I was actually able to increase my number of footcandles at the exam level by 50%,” he says. “I actually increased my light output, as well as decreasing my energy consumption.”
Significantly, the facility was able to standardize with a single fixture in all of the patient rooms on the fourth floor, regardless of whether the rooms accommodate one or two patients, with Dlite amadea Bed 2x54 Ws. This fixture is also standard in the hospital’s cardiac, neurology, oncology, orthopedics, and pediatric units.
The fixture aesthetics were a major priority as well, and the wall lighting system fulfills that requirement, Menke adds. “We were really going after aesthetics. The look was very important to us as well—ease of cleaning, ease of changing the light bulbs, and then aesthetically, how it fit in with our design parameters for the entire floor.”
The slender, low-profile design of the fixtures is a key to their adhering to the aesthetic priority, according to Menke. Additionally, the single wall mounts minimize the number of connections. “We know that, between the lighting changes we’ve done as well as some changes we’ve made in how we operate our HVAC equipment, we’re on a trend to save somewhere around $90,000 in our energy costs this year,” he says, referring to trend data and adding that the hospital saved more than $10,000 in May 2010, exceeding expectations.
A financial analysis comparing second and fourth-floor patient rooms indicates that the hospital is saving $761.69 per room, or more than $41,000 for the entire floor of 54 rooms, over 20 years in operating costs by figuring in lower kilowatt-hours per day. This translates to a payback period of 5.2 years.
Regulating Fixture-to-Panel Electricity
One new lighting control system manufacturer custom-designs its system for each facility, and that controls the amount of electricity that flows from the lighting panel to individual high-intensity discharge or fluorescent fixtures after the fixture is first turned on, yielding a reported typical energy savings of 15%–35%, and a payback period of one year is said to be possible. The manufacturer, Magnetic & Transformer Technologies Corp., points out that its WattManager fixture requires more energy when first turned on; after warm-up, the fixture is ignited and stabilized at normal voltage. The manufacturer custom-designs the fixture for a proposed facility. After a predetermined warm-up period of 10–18 minutes, the voltage is decreased. The fixture is then powered by a constant voltage level, reportedly with no perceptible loss of light.
The system controls any ballast-based, gaseous discharge lighting system and interfaces with any dedicated lighting circuit of 120, 240, 277, 208, or 480 V in load currents of 20 to 120 amperes for single phase or 20 to 150 amperes for three-phase systems. The appliance is installed directly before the electrical panel, and no relamping is necessary. The system reportedly works in conjunction with other energy saving devices, such as high-efficiency lamps, photoelectric switches, and other energy-management systems and down-line switching capability is also available.
Installation involves connecting three or four power wires from the fixture electrical panel to the system’s unit enclosure box; the other system parameters are set up at the factory.
Author's Bio:
Don Talend specializes in covering sustainability, technology, and innovation.
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