LED Lighting Retrofits for Commercial Buildings – The How and Why
For commercial building managers, commercial real estate portfolio managers and anyone who manages commercial properties.
Are your commercial buildings utility bills out of control?
This most likely is the result of using outdated and inefficient lighting to illuminate your commercial building. You wouldn’t be alone in this regard as many commercial buildings are in a similar position and are essentially wasting money each month, money that could be spent elsewhere. Currently, many options to correct this are now available. The most obvious solution for reducing your buildings operational expenses is to do a LED lighting retrofit. This is a guaranteed way to lower your power bill substantially.
Retrofitting your commercial building with advanced LED lighting will replace those outdated and energy inefficient conventional incandescent, halogen, and compact fluorescent lights which have been causing you to spend additional and unnecessary money each month on your outrageous energy bill. The LED retrofitting process for commercial properties is straight forward, in this article we discuss some of the details with the intentions of giving you the ammunition needed that if you so choose to take this rout and convert to LED lighting, this hopefully will assist in making this process go as smooth as possible.
When contemplating an advanced lighting project for your commercial building, there’s often one question at the forefront: “How much will this cost us?”
The truth is, each commercial building differs in square footage, structure, and hours of operation – these important factors directly impact the cost of each individual lighting project.
It’s important to mention that through our strategic partnerships, the specific LED lighting retrofit that we are offering to qualified customers has a zero-money down option – Schedule an Energy Audit to see if you qualify for the ERSA program.
When planning and installing LED Retrofit lighting program in commercial buildings, it’s important to consider a few things before getting started.
- How much light do your tenants require?
- Are you over-lighting or under-lighting your building?
Keep in mind when retrofitting, your building may not need more light, it may just greatly benefit from a much better quality of light that advanced LED lighting is known for.
- What are your desired LED lighting goals?
- Are you looking to improve the value of your property?
- Are you trying to meet corporate environmental standards?
- Are you trying to cut costs by increasing your overall energy efficiency?
An LED lighting retrofit will assist you in achieving these goals!
By improving your buildings lighting efficiency by converting to LED lighting, you may also increase the value of the building—and potentially increase your lease revenues as well! This ultimately will lead to increased CAP rates. LED lighting is a fantastic way to decrease the amount of energy your building currently uses thus reducing your carbon footprint and increasing corporate responsibility. Not only will LED lighting be a more sustainable long-term solution, LED lighting is the best modern solution for reducing your monthly energy bills and ultimately reducing your buildings overall operational expenses. Its truly a win/win.
According to the Small Business Administration, lighting accounts for nearly 50% of a commercial buildings monthly electricity consumption. This means that by converting your building to LED lighting you can save a substantial amount of money on your monthly utility bills by making a significant energy efficient upgrade! It’s as simple as that.
How the LED Lighting Retrofit Process Works
It Starts with the Energy Audit
What does the Energy Audit Entail?
A commercial energy audit is a detailed analysis of your commercial buildings energy efficiency, the audit is conducted by qualified energy auditors, engineers and or any other qualified energy reduction experts. The energy audit is generally initiated by visiting your building to determine specific ways that your facility can reduce energy costs and minimize your carbon foot print.
In this process, an auditor will also analyze your past utility bills to ensure you were correctly billed at the proper rates.
- Walk-through Analysis
- Energy Survey & Engineering Analysis
- Detailed Analysis of Energy Reduction Plan
We then discover on your behalf what Local, State, Federal Rebates & Incentives you qualify for
Building owners are mostly unaware of the rebates and incentives that are available to them. A good portion of this country’s utility companies offer cash rebates and other incentives to promote different energy efficiency initiatives. Commercial building owners are incentivized to reduce their energy usage during the times of peak demand or reduce through more energy efficient equipment and programs. The federal government offers several programs that reward building owners for investing in clean energy and becoming more energy efficient as well.
ERSA Program – Available Financing to Qualified Customers
What is ERSA?
ERSA is an acronym for “Energy Reduction Services Agreement” and the program covers all costs associated with the manufacturing, installation, and maintenance of the LED lighting technology. Our trusted partner will create, design, and install an advanced custom lighting solution that will optimize your energy savings, rebates, and incentives.
All projects are custom tailored to meet your specific client needs and include new/retrofit LED lighting systems, LED controls, LED networking, functionality, monitoring, emergency backup, and on location solar harvesting, in addition to all other required lighting components.
The ERSA program utilizes energy savings provided by Photonic Lab’s LED lighting and other energy reducing technology as the source of financing lighting projects. Photonic Capital, our finance division provides complete turn-key financing. Read more about our successful ERSA installations.
HOW ERSA WORKS:
- A certified representative will conduct an energy audit of the current lighting to ascertains, and if necessary, designs custom replacement lighting
- Based on energy reduction and maintenance savings, the overall energy savings is then calculated to be 40% to 80% savings, and an immediate reduction in their lighting utility bills
- Our finance partner utilizes the remaining energy savings to fund the cost of manufacturing and installation; financing costs over a 5-7-year term w/fixed monthly payment
- Our partner warranties and maintains all products throughout the entire financing term
Project Assignment & Management
Whether it’s new construction or a LED lighting retrofit, our network of installers and other energy reduction experts will successfully manage your energy initiatives, so that you can focus on what you do best. Our trusted network partner will be responsible for the planning and final delivery on any of your energy reduction projects.
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