March 2012 Newsletter

IS YOUR BUILDING A CANDIDATE FOR A LIGHTING SYSTEM UPGRADE? THE NLB (National Lighting Bureau ) SAYS 2 MILLION PLUS BUILDINGS ARE!!

More than 2.2 million of the nation’s 2.7 million older (pre-1980) commercial buildings have been using the same lighting for the past three decades, the National Lighting Bureau reports, citing data published by the Department of Energy’s (DoE’s) Energy Information Administration (EIA). The Bureau estimates that 3 million or more commercial and other nonresidential buildings are candidates for money- and energy-saving lighting-system upgrades.

The Bureau derived the data – the most recent available – from EIA’s “2003 Commercial Buildings Energy Consumption Survey.” As defined by the EIA, commercial buildings comprise those where 50% or more of the floorspace is used for nonresidential, nonindustrial, or nonagricultural purposes. EIA divided the buildings by age: Those built before 1980 (2.73 million) and those built since (1.92 million). According to EIA data, only 455,000 (17%) of the older buildings reported lighting-system upgrades since 1980.

“We have no way of knowing how many of the almost two million newer buildings were using outdated lighting at the time of the survey,” Bureau Vice Chair Susan Bloom (Philips Lighting and Philips Lighting Electronics) commented, “but other data suggest that a substantial majority of those buildings were constructed before 1990, at a time when designers and builders could not incorporate most of the great developments in high-quality, energy-efficient lighting that have been introduced in the last 10-15 years. In other words, of the almost 4.7 million buildings considered, close to 3 million – if not more – were candidates for lighting-system upgrades in 2003.”

73 percent of Lighting Sold Will be LED

The US Department of Energy (DOE) has published an update of its report forecasting the energy savings potential of LED white-light sources. Energy Savings Potential of Solid-State Lighting in General Illumination Applications compares the annual lighting energy consumption in the US with and without the further market penetration of LED lighting. The energy savings potential is represented by the difference in energy consumption between the two scenarios.

The forecast indicates that LED lighting in general illumination applications has the potential to reduce US lighting energy consumption by nearly one-half. Among the other highlights:

-LED lighting is expected to represent 36 percent of lumen-hour sales on the general illumination market by 2020, and 74 percent by 2030.

-By 2030, the annual site energy savings from market penetration of LEDs will be approximately 300 terawatt-hours, or the equivalent annual electrical output of about 50 1000-megawatt power plants. At today’s energy prices, that equates to approximately $30 billion in savings in 2030 alone.

-Assuming the same mix of power stations, these savings would reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 210 million metric tons of carbon in 2030. The total energy consumption for lighting would decrease by roughly 46 percent relative to a scenario with no additional LEDs on the market – enough electricity to completely power nearly 24 million homes.

-The econometric model underlying the report relies on assumptions of efficacy, retail price, and operating life that are based on work conducted collaboratively by DOE and industry experts, including members of the Next Generation Lighting Industry Alliance.

The model separately analyzes four sectors of the US lighting market: residential, commercial, industrial, and outdoor stationary. The residential market is today comprised of highly inefficient incandescent lamps, to which LEDs provide a cost-effective (on a life-cycle basis) alternative. The commercial sector, by virtue of its size – 60 percent of lighting service in the US in 2010, also presents an opportunity for significant energy savings

Austin Squitieri
Advanced Power Technologies