Bright Ideas Lighting Co.

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www.BrightIdeasLightingCo.com Boise lighting maintenance and energy efficient lighting upgrades

Tuesday, March 8, 2011

8 foot light fixture upgrade

Recently we had a commercial lighting upgrade project in Boise, Idaho where the customer had 8' T12 fixtures that each had 4 light bulbs in them.  They were big fixtures that looked very dated and they were not very energy efficient.    Each fixture was consuming 276 watts and not producing adequate light.

We looked at a couple of different options and decided that it was not worth it to attempt to retrofit the old fixture to something more energy efficient like T8 8' lamps.  

The better approach was to scrap the old fixture entirely and use a new 8' fixture with tandem 4' T8 light bulbs.  The 4' T8 bulbs last longer than the 8' lamps and are much more energy efficient.  

We used high performance ballasts and high lumen T8 light bulbs.  The new fixtures use 110 watts and produce more light than the old fixtures.  

Also the light quality is better.  The old 8' T12 bulbs had a color rendering index of only 60, while the new T8 4' bulbs have a CRI of 83. 

The old T12 8' light bulbs only had a rated life time of 12,000 hours, while the new high performance T8 light bulbs have a rated life of 24,000 hours.

By using the energy saving fixtures and high performance bulbs and ballasts we were able to get the customer Idaho Power rebates that paid for approximately 70 percent of total project costs. 

The energy savings on each fixture is estimated at approximately $37 per year.   The energy savings in the first year is more than the after rebate cost of each fixture.  

Bright Ideas Lighting Co also warrantied all the bulbs and ballasts on this job for 2 years, thus eliminating lighting maintenance costs!

It is important when doing commercial lighting projects like this to make use you use a licensed electrical contractor who has experience in lighting upgrades.