If your building, including hotels, as well as, assisted living facilities, has not already upgraded to LED lighting, this article may be useful in terms of developing your own plan for a LED retro-fit. Local Law 88 and Local Law 134 require that all buildings 25,000 s/f or larger upgrade to energy efficient LED lighting. Since this mandated upgrade is not an “if,”  but a “when,” here are a few guidelines to help make your own upgrade a success. 

Hotels and assisted living facilities are required to upgrade the entire building including common areas, living areas, as well as, all of the hotel guest rooms. This requirement does not apply to multifamily residential buildings, where the LED upgrade requirement is limited to common areas only – not the residential units. As a result, the LED upgrade project for both hotels and assisted living facilities is significantly larger, but interestingly, has the potential for more substantial savings and faster paybacks – usually in the range of one to two years. This “faster” payback usually equates to a 50% return on the LED project investment cost or better.

Because LED products use significantly less energy than traditional lighting products, the result is always major reduction in the related utility bills. Our recommended strategy is to use this utility bill reduction as the vehicle to fund your project.

To better illustrate how utility bill reduction can “fund” your retrofit, here are some comparisons of electric consumption levels of traditional lighting products as compared to LED products - along with their useful product lives:

60 Watt A19 Lamp – 2,000 hour useful life. / The LED Replacement:  9 Watt LED Lamp with a 25,000 hour useful life – 5 Year Warranty.  (85% savings with the LED Lamp.)

40 Watt Candelabra Lamp – 5,000 hour useful life / The LED Replacement: 5 Watt LED Candle with a 25,000 hour useful life – 5 Year Warranty. (88% savings with the LED Candle.)

32 Watt 4’ T8 Fluorescent Tube – 20,000 hour useful life / The LED Replacement: 12 Watt LED Tube with a 70,000 hour useful life – 5 year warranty. (63% savings with the LED tube.)

Note that every one of the LED products included in these examples has a five-year warranty – which equates to a substantially longer useful life as compared to the traditional lighting products that they replace.  

This “guaranteed” five year useful life – or greater - is the key ingredient supporting the economics of your retrofit. Since the average payback periods for the upfront cost of a LED retrofit ranges from 1 to 3 years, having a five year warranty which covers your newly installed LED products is your assurance that the projected savings will more than cover your project cost – with a couple of years to spare.

Another benefit from a LED upgrade is less maintenance. With the longer useful lives of LED products – minimum five years - far less building staff time will be required for failed lamp changes. This five-year useful product life is especially important for hotels as it will virtually eliminate lamp changes in guest rooms as well as other difficult to access locations during the warranty period.

Finally, it is important to note that hotels and assisted living facilities can qualify for the Con Ed Commercial & Industrial LED lighting rebate program. These rebates can significantly lower the cost of your LED upgrade program. To qualify for these rebates, you will need to work with a Con Ed market partner. 

In terms of initiating your own LED retrofit project, we recommend starting with a lighting model that will give you an accurate picture of the economics – installed cost, annual savings and payback. For this model, you will need your existing lighting costs, including annual electric consumption, costs for lamp replacement products as well as maintenance time for lamp replacement. This is the “before” – your benchmark to measure the cost effectiveness of any proposed LED retrofit plan. For the “after,” you will need the specifics of the LED replacement products selected to determine your “installed” cost as well as the annual operating expenses along with your estimated Con Ed rebate to develop your payback calculations. For this model, we would recommend that you work with a consultant who is a Con Ed market partner, who has the capacity to model lighting projects.

One final word of practical advice. Make sure that you install a sample of each LED product that you plan to incorporate in your retrofit. These samples should be installed in the same locations where the final installation will take place. 

George Crawford is the principal of Green Partners, New York, N.Y.