Real Estate Journal — Green Buildings — March 28 - April 10, 2014 — 20B
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By George Crawford, Green Partners NY How to jump start your LED retro-fit project
I
f your building has not already upgraded to LED lighting, this article may
retro-fit will include replac- ing the newer, more energy efficient fluorescent products such as CFLs. It is also impor- tant to note that with today’s LED lighting quality, name department stores as well as museums and galleries are now converting to LED. These are users that require a very high quality of lighting, where second best solutions are not an option. So start with the premise that there is a quality LED lighting solution for your project. The purpose of this article is to help you achieve that successful LED lighting
solution. The starting place, as with most projects, is a spread sheet or a model to quantify the economics of your project. For this projection, you will need an accurate measure of your existing lighting configura- tion, including annual electric consumption, purchase costs for lamp replacement products as well as maintenance costs in connection lamp replace- ments. This is the “before”, the “benchmark” that you will use to measure the cost effec- tiveness of any proposed LED retro-fit options developed for
your project. For the “after”, you will need to include the specifics relating to each LED product selected – cost, energy con- sumption, anticipated useful life, warranty information, Energy Star designation – or not, funding availability and anticipated lampmaintenance. With this “before” and “after” information, you will then be able to compare the amount of energy and annual cost to operate and maintain your existing lighting as compared to the projected costs of oper- ating and maintaining your
proposed new LED lighting retro-fit. It should be noted that the preparation of your “spread- sheet” will require knowledge of currently available LED product best suited to replace your existing lighting, the abil- ity to determine the installed cost of the proposed replace- ment LED product as well as the amount of funding that would be available for your project, including financing options. With regard to funding op- portunities, as a general rule, utilities want to encourage and promote energy savings mea- sures. Because all quality LED products use substantially less energy than comparable incan- descent or fluorescent lighting products, funding LED retro- fits offers a very cost efficient solution for utility companies to achieve their goal of energy savings. Funding from utility companies is also beneficial to the end user, because they receive the cash payments – “funding” – to offset a sig- nificant portion of their invest- ment in their LED retro-fit. For buildings that want to conserve cash, financing a LED retro-fit is a viable option. There are a number of financial institutions, such as Barret Capital or M-Core Credit that specialize in financing energy saving related projects. The debt service for this type of financing is tied to the sav- ings that result from the en- ergy efficiencies achieved from the retro-fit. Contact Barry Korn (BKorn@BarrettCapital. com) or Michael Weisberg (Michael@M-CoreCredit.com) for more information. In terms of developing a retro-fit plan with accurate projections, you should only consider working with a knowl- edgeable consultant, who will not only be able to source available utility funding for your project, but will also have access to computer software in order to model the “before” and “after” scenarios of your project. To start your LED Retro-Fit on the right track, you can ac- cess additional New York Real Estate Journal articles on LED retro-fits at www.Greenpart- nersNY.com . Get started with your LED retro-fit with the confidence that you will have a successful project. George Crawford is prin- cipal of Green Partners. n
be helpful in terms of de- veloping your own plan for a LED retro- fit. While it is a given that LED retro- fits will save m o n e y o n
George Crawford
energy consumption as well as maintenance costs, it is important to understand that the amount of savings can be very significant, even when the
Green Partners is your one-stop energy efficiency consultant. We offer low cost solutions to help meet compliance requirements for PlaNYC Greener, Greater Buildings legislation.
• Local Law 87 - Energy Audits and Retro-Commissioning • Local Law 84 - Benchmarking and Energy Star
We can save money on your energy bills with LED Lighting solutions through our
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