NY's commercial lighting program

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SolarAndWood

Minister of Fire
Feb 3, 2008
6,788
Syracuse NY
I wanted to share our recent positive experience with this program. Our office is 10,000 sq ft and has 80s era 4 bulb flourescent fixtures. Through the program, we got 70% off retrofit kits for the fixtures that installed a reflector, replaced the ballast and the bulbs. This converted them to lower wattage 2 bulb watt fixtures that also do a much better job of lighting the space. The process was painless and only took a couple weeks from quote to completion.

http://www.nyserda.org/sclp2/faqs.asp
 
The power companies here in MA have a similar program.

We changed 125 400 watt metal halide hi-bay fixtures to 5 lamp t-8 high output fixtures. We were getting 30 more lumens (maybe it was foot candle power or something) at floor level using 1/5 the power!

The bid was around 27k. Their calculated savings put the pay off period at 1 year and a couple months (the lights are on 24/7). The power company kicked in a rebate of $100 per fixture, the pay off period was now on the order of 6 months! Yet we still had to practically pull teeth to get this company to allow us to do the job!

The quality of light was also better.
 
seige101 said:
Yet we still had to practically pull teeth to get this company to allow us to do the job!

While I am generally not a fan of government mandated programs funded by mandatory fees with inevitable loss to overhead, I would not have been able to sell this project otherwise either. Next target is the 20 year old rooftop units. These types of upgrades with quick payback that minimally effect operations to install are a no brainer.

Insulating the building will be a tougher sell. I'd love to see an IR shot of the roof on a cold winter day. For some reason there is never snow up there even though we get 10' on average per year.
 
Great program. If the new ballasts are electronic instead of the old style transformer type (which I'm sure they are) it will save power to turn the light off even if only for a short period of time. These work great with occupancy detectors to turn off lights in unoccupied areas.
 
So once everybody drops their power usage does the electric company get to justify a rise in rates because no one is using enough power anymore? It happened with water in my area.
 
You are not the only cynic about these programs btuser. We fund them every time we pay our bill, I'm sure a good chunk is skimmed off in overhead and guaranteed the power company gets all the benefit in the long run. However, we don't have a choice on the mandated fees and the project pays for itself long before the power company is able to jack their rates up. Something tells me that as a society we are going to consume all the electricity we can produce and distribute for a long time anyway. Not much you can do as an end consumer other than go off the gird.
 
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