LED lights have turned out to be a revolutionary innovation in the lighting industry. They not only manage to get around all the drawbacks associated with traditional lighting options but are also incredibly more energy efficient.
More and more businesses are switching to commercial LED lighting for the huge cost savings they offer, and also for the many other advantages, they come with.
But let’s talk about the cost saving part in more detail, as that’s something that matters the most to businesses with large commercial spaces and huge energy costs.
Energy Cost Savings with Commercial LED Lighting
The biggest savings a business would have by switching to commercial LED lighting from a traditional lighting option would be in terms of the energy costs. This is because the energy costs on the lighting is one of the biggest expenses of a commercial space.
To be a little specific, the Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs estimates that about 40 percent of all energy costs in a commercial establishment go towards the lighting electricity cost. It goes on to state that the lighting electricity costs in a 10,000-square-foot commercial typically range between $4,500 to $8,500 a year.
Commercial LED lighting tend to offer energy savings of as much as 65 to 80 percent compared to traditional lighting options, depending on which traditional lighting option currently installed in your commercial facility. Now, that’s quite some savings especially as they add up in a massive way over a few years.
No matter the type of traditional lighting currently installed in your facility, LED lighting is sure to offer a huge amount of savings in terms of energy costs. While LED lights consume about 65% less energy than some of the more energy efficient traditional lights such as halogen lighting, they offer you around 80% energy savings than some of the least energy efficient lights like incandescent bulbs.
Much Longer Lifespan and Lower Maintenance Costs
LED lights absolutely blow traditional lighting options away when it comes to the lifespan. While incandescent bulbs typically come with a lifespan of up to 2,000 hours and halogen lights up to 4,000 hours, LED lights boast a lifespan of a massive 50,000 to 100,000 hours.
It’s not related to direct cost savings in the form of lower energy bills, but if you consider the replacement costs of traditional lights for the lifetime of LED lights, you will find that there’s huge savings to be had here as well. And that’s even after taking into account the higher initial costs of LED lights.
Furthermore, LED lights are much less prone to issues like breaking and dimming that are common with traditional options, which again mean that they have to be replaced much more often. Similarly, there are more maintenance costs associated with traditional lights as keep encountering such issues from time to time.
We are not even getting into the “safety” costs here. Most traditional lights contain toxic chemicals like mercury, which can be very harmful for your workers or employees when exposed to for a long time. And considering that traditional lights getting damaged or breaking easily is more common, the safety cost is definitely something worth taking into consideration as well.
LED lights, on the other hand, do not contain anything that would pose a threat to the safety of your employees. So in addition to the savings, there’s a lot of peace of mind that they offer too.
Savings on Air Conditioning Costs
Incandescent bulbs only use around 10 percent of the energy they consume to produce visible light, and the rest is just spent on producing heat. Other traditional lighting options like halogen lights aren’t much better with up to 80 percent being used to product useless heat.
This not only means a lot of energy wastage, but also calls for much more intense cooling requirements. The heat these lights emit obviously leads to a hotter environment in your commercial facility, which requires more cooling.
And air conditioning costs tend to be a significant component of a commercial facility’s overall expenses too. However, LED lights also go a long way in helping you save on these costs, primarily because they are very energy efficient here as well, using as much as around 80 percent of the energy in producing light, with only about 20 percent ending up as heat.
This would help you save big on your cooling costs, as LED lights emit much less heat than traditional lights and keep the environment cooler.
In addition, LED lights also ensure a much better level of safety, as the biggest risks in any commercial establishment tend to be heat and fire. And it doesn’t need to be told how expensive a fire accident can be at a workplace or commercial establishment.
Customized Operation for More Savings
Modern LED light systems also come with a great level of customization that are designed to not only make it easier for you to manage your facility’s lighting but also help you save significantly on your energy costs.
These LED systems allow precise directional control, meaning that you can choose areas where you want the light to be dimmer or even turned off when there’s no activity there. Some LED lighting systems also come with sensors to automatically turn off the lights in areas where there’s no activity, and turn them back on when the activity starts.
Another thing to note here is that LED lights are bright and have uniform focus, while most traditional lights tend to make a bright spot right under them, leaving the surrounding area dimmer. For large commercial facilities, this may mean that you’re using more light fixtures than you would with the more uniform LED lights.
Similarly, these advanced systems also offer many other impressive features, including automatic brightness that keeps changing the brightness of the lights depending on the natural brightness or the time of the day. You can also easily dim the lights whenever you want.
All these features and innovation goes a long way in reducing wastage of energy, which really shows in your energy bills.
