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Energy Saving
Commercial Lighting – LEDs
Obviously, commercial lighting is an early consideration if you’re adopting renewable technologies and generating and storing your own electricity. It’s important to realise you can significantly improve the performance of more complex renewables energy technology by this relatively easy move.
For example, if you install the most efficient and long-lasting commercial LED lighting – it’ll help your profits significantly.
Of course, industrial LED lighting projects are something IU Energy has a great deal of experience with. For example –
- Ceiling lights
- Shop lights
- Strip lights
- Wall lights
- Public area lighting (e.g. car parks)
- Factory lights
LED lights are definitely of benefit if you normally have to shut down a production line to replace a light source.
Landlords: Improve your EPC and maintenance costs
A point often overlooked is that energy efficient lighting also impacts your Energy Performance Certificate (EPC). In particular, this is beneficial for Landlords, where it helps to achieve a higher rating. This is significant because Landlords can no longer let unless the property has an EPC rating of E or higher.
To be sure, many hotels are taking advantage of the ease and convenience of replacing their illumination. Certainly, LED commercial lighting is an early step in the right direction. For this reason, retailers, manufacturers and countless other businesses are doing the same.
Lifetime cost comparison
Here’s a simplistic but relevant 24,000-hour lifetime comparison for commercial LED lighting–
Type of lightbulb | 5-Watt LED Spotlight | 50-Watt Halogen |
Cost of electricity (@ £0.15 / kWh) | £18.00 | £180.00 |
Bulbs needed to last 24,000 hours | 1 | 12 |
Bulb expense | £5.00 | £18.00 |
Total cost of buying and running the bulb | £23.00 | £198.00 |
Total saving LED versus Halogen: £175
It certainly takes little imagination to see what impact energy efficient lighting has on your profits over the years. It can be very significant if you’re illuminating a –
- Car-park
- Educational establishment
- Factory
- Gym
- Office
- Place of Worship
- Restaurant
- Retail premises
- Sports ground
- Warehouse
In particular, Education applications qualify for Salix finance, which IU Energy will help you apply for.
Further information
You can download a Technology Information Sheet here.
Below are some of our case studies for projects we have conducted in energy efficient lighting, followed by FAQs.
FAQs
The more lumens, the brighter the light. LED bulbs require much less wattage to produce useful lumens than their predecessor compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs), halogen, or incandescent light bulbs, which is why LED bulbs are more energy-efficient and long lasting than the other types of bulb.
There are two key terms pertaining to light bulbs: watts and lumens. A watt refers to the amount of energy required to power a bulb. With incandescent bulbs, the number of watts became synonymous with the level of brightness, even though a watt really does not tell you anything more than the amount of power necessary to light the bulb.
Lumens, on the other hand, indicate the actual amount of light emitted by the bulb. For example, the technologies that have been replaced by LEDs saw a typical incandescent 40W light bulb drawing 40 watts of power and providing about 400 lumens of brightness. A compact fluorescent lamp (CFL) required 9-13 watts to produce 400 lumens, but an LED light bulb uses just 6-7 watts to provide the same number.
LEDs are the most efficient form of lighting in all applications, which is why they have superseded their counterparts.
LEDs do not emit as much heat as other sources of light: that’s because they are so energy efficient. However, LED fixtures still need to be designed to dissipate heat; otherwise they will fail prematurely.
Fluorescent lights require a high voltage burst to get started and then something to regulate the power that comes to the tube — the ‘ballast’ takes care of all of this. These ‘ballasts’ in your fluorescent fittings will ruin most new LED bulbs. Some LED bulb manufacturers offer bulbs that can work with the ballast in place, but they are less efficient and more expensive.
