Briteledlighting.com
Hialeah, Fl. 33012
Closed on Sunday
Lighting cost are a key factor in energy cost for commercial properties which is why there has been an overwhelming conversion to switch to energy efficient LED lighting in the last few years. It’s energy efficient, less maintenance, last longer and 2018 LED prices make it “painless” to convert your property to LEDs.
According to the US Department of Energy, the number of LED installations quadrupled from 215 million units in 2014 to 874 million units in 2016. Still, there is long way to go with market penetration at just under 13% in the US. There is not a better time than 2020 to consider retrofitting your property with LED lighting, especially in areas which have lights on 24/7, such as interior corridors, stairwells and covered garages. Other areas which are ideal to reduce lighting energy cost in condominiums and office buildings would be outside parking lighting, this includes wall packs, flood lightings on buildings and other general outdoor lighting. With today’s high lumens per watt you can reduce lighting energy by up to 75%.
“We’ve seen more interest in the last 2 years from our contractors who opt to purchase an entire LED fixture instead of our LED retrofit kits”, explained Marilyn Cortez, CEO for Brite LED Lighting, a wholesale distributor in South Florida. “Why, we can now wholesale to a contractor a 300w LED area parking fixture (used to replace a 1,000w HID fixture) for just under $400.00 each, which is less than the cost of a traditional HID parking fixture replacement. Our 300w LED lamp generates an amazing 42,000 lumens which is 140lm per watt, an enormous increase in lumens per watt from just 4 years ago,” stated Cortez.
For commercial property owners and condominium associations there are several ways to begin the process of implementing LED lighting. Depending on whether funds have been allocated in your capital budget, you can also use several financing options to mitigate cash flow issues. This can be a traditional “lease to purchase” program or several other options we can recommend. Some options are turnkey, installation, parts and maintenance, and some programs are equipment only.
There are several other financing vehicles which specialize in energy efficient projects, whether it’s lighting, HVAC or window treatments. One of the programs is through the Ygrene Energy Fund which adds the cost of retrofitting to energy efficient projects through property taxes on the building. This program enables you to implement energy efficient lighting and pay it through taxes which doesn’t show up on your tax bill for 18 months. Your already ahead of the game saving on energy by the time the cost is added to your property taxes.
If your property management company (or board members) doesn’t think it’s “time yet” to convert to LED lighting they should take another look since the cost of LED lights have come down dramatically since 2013. As an example, if they run some numbers consider a retrofit project where 100-128w T8 fluorescent fixtures replaced with 100-52w LED lamps. Based on a cost of about .11cents per kilowatt hour and the lamps operate 2870 hours per year the project would pay for itself in about 4 years and save the owner (s) $41,000 over the life of the equipment and yield a lifetime return of (ROI) of 411%., just try getting that type of return at your local bank.
Even with the energy saving, many utilities like FPL in South Florida, have available rebates for lighting.
The rebates vary but can cover significant portions of the cost of an energy efficiency improvement depending on the types of lights being replaced and the current rebate program. Federal government guidelines which mandate the conversion to LEDs to become the standard option for lighting, there’s a good chance that utility companies will phase out rebates for lighting projects which is something else to consider if you delay the conversion. Give us a call at our Miami office/showroom 1.786.563.3160 and we’ll be glad to forward you a worksheet for the current FPL rebate program so you know what your savings would be.
Contact Brite LED Lighting and we’ll be glad to send you the various ways to implement energy efficient lighting in 2018, and we can even recommend some of the local contractors we work with who can provide you with a turnkey installation if you don’t have a qualified electrician on staff or in your rolodex.
To check out some of the LED lighting products we offer, just scan the QR code with your smartphone and you can pull up our digital catalog online. If you check our website, BriteLEDLighting.com you’ll see some special offers we also have for new customers.