Switching Factory to L.E.D's. Are these savings/claims actually true?

Aubrey_Thicket

Hi all

This is a long post guys, the reasons which are explained herein. I would rather give too much information than not enough.

My family own a business in an old mill that has been present since the late 70's. They are fully aware that the lighting needs upgrading and have considered changing their factory to L.E.D Lighting. However, given the negative stories around of con men with regard to Green Deal, solar panels etc they are very nervous. Add to this that they regularly receive lots of cold call firms offering to save them Thousands of pounds per year without even knowing how much electricity they even use.

So, recently after a couple of cold calls my family agreed to speak to a company who visited the factory and completed a survey.

Without going into the technical details of the quote YET the company have made some bold claims. Therefore, I wanted to visit here first to arm myself with some questions to ask them in the future. Naturally I won't dive in head strong but it would be good to have some information before I proceed further.

So, the claims the company made were:

Savings between 50% and 80% (LED over our current 1970's old lights)
LED'S last 3 to 10 times longer than regular lighting
Significant reduction in company carbon footprint
All incandescent lights van now be retrofitted with LED's
100% Tax deductible in year 1 via governments Enhanced Capital Allowances Scheme

Any thoughts, ideas or suggestions please ?

DoaM

I can't answer your specific questions - I'm just replying to say that the factory part of where I work are switching fluorescent lighting to LED lighting ... and my company never spends money on infrastructure unless there's a solid cost saving analysis in place.

JJ_Egan

<<So, recently after a couple of cold calls>>

Cold calls no never .

System

OK look at it from a domestic point of view.

Assume 15p per kWh.

A 100W lightbulb uses around 15p every 10hrs.
A LED replacement that gives the same illumination is typically around 18W so uses 15p of electricity every 55hrs, the incandescent in that time would have used 83p.

An incandescent lightbulb is £1.50, a LED one is a similar price, actually cheaper in many cases. The 18W LED bulb is effectively a free bulb in just a few weeks normal use in comparison to the running costs of a 100W incandescent. 100W lightbulbs need replacing quite often, I've recently replaced the LED lightbulbs that I fitted when I bought the house 7 years ago and only because they were taking longer to get up to full brightness.

It is a no brainer.

langsmith

Aubrey_Thicket wrote: »

Hi all

This is a long post guys, the reasons which are explained herein. I would rather give too much information than not enough.

My family own a business in an old mill that has been present since the late 70's. They are fully aware that the lighting needs upgrading and have considered changing their factory to L.E.D Lighting. However, given the negative stories around of con men with regard to Green Deal, solar panels etc they are very nervous. Add to this that they regularly receive lots of cold call firms offering to save them Thousands of pounds per year without even knowing how much electricity they even use.

At work, we had a our electrician change everything where possible. Our carbon footprint went down, as did our energy costs.

So, recently after a couple of cold calls my family agreed to speak to a company who visited the factory and completed a survey.

Without going into the technical details of the quote YET the company have made some bold claims. Therefore, I wanted to visit here first to arm myself with some questions to ask them in the future. Naturally I won't dive in head strong but it would be good to have some information before I proceed further.

So, the claims the company made were:

Savings between 50% and 80% (LED over our current 1970's old lights)
LED'S last 3 to 10 times longer than regular lighting
Significant reduction in company carbon footprint
All incandescent lights van now be retrofitted with LED's
100% Tax deductible in year 1 via governments Enhanced Capital Allowances Scheme

Any thoughts, ideas or suggestions please ?

Firstly, never accept cold calling. It'll bite you badly.

Secondly, I changed all lights in my own home and, those on a Private Housing Estates, communal area lightly - I'm a Residents Assoc. Director. The savings are there to be had, you will see your energy consumption reduce in year one, however, ROI, depends on the many factors.

If you have a local guy or company electrician, get them to do the lights - preferably PIR activation, in conjunction with fixed working hour settings?

ballyblack

So, recently after a couple of cold calls my family agreed to speak to a company who visited the factory and completed a survey.

Absolutly NO

get/pay for a competent electrician to survey it for you.

You may need wiring upgraded if its very old

paddyrg

Cold callers NEVER have your best interests at heart. Decline their offer, but carry on with your research.

In terms of energy usage, LED are inherently MUCH lower than incandescent bulbs - but the factor by which they are more efficient depends on the "driver" circuit which powers it. This is especially important for a factory where you may be on a half-hourly electricity meter or have power factors to consider. This is why you need to ask a proper *industrial* electrician about this as (for instance) the terrible power factors of many LED lamps that use capacitive droppers may mean you pay more than you need to by not looking at the factory as a whole. It's not quite the same as a domestic supply.

There's another factor to consider, which is that you can reduce basic maintenance costs (with quality kit) as you may change a bulb every 5-10 years as opposed to every 1-2 years. The actual LEDs are actually very enduring (10+ years) but the driver circuits are what fail, so again this is where an actual specialist can advise. Again, it's less of an issue for a domestic setting where lights may be on for a couple of hours at a time compared with whole days in an industrial setting where more heat may build up.

Heedtheadvice

^^^ as per Paddy.

The cold callers claims are probably reasonable in general but you would be better with a competent local firm that could not only change existing to led but also review lighting requirements, ensure lighting levels meet standards,existing electrics are still suitable (no problems expected with power requirements as LEDs use a lot less but there may be deterioration over the years), can bring electrics up to modern standards, certify and still be around (hopefully!) to maintain and inspect in the future. You could maybe even tie in with Portable Appliance Testing or other factory specialist work.
Could you get this from the cold caller?

bengalknights

Agree with the above posters, better to bring in a local electrician and see what they can do for you.

LEDs in general do save at least 10% on what it is replacing (unless its another LED)

paddyrg

bengalknights wrote: »

Agree with the above posters, better to bring in a local electrician and see what they can do for you.

LEDs in general do save at least 10% on what it is replacing (unless its another LED)

Before considering driver efficiency, they are upto 10x more efficient than tungsten converting ITRO 40-50% of energy to light compared with 4-5% from incandescent. It's why the driver efficiency is important as it makes a difference to the overall efficiency.

Where tungsten has a distinct advantage is in smoothness of light, where LED can be flickery with a poor driver, a good driver will flicker at maybe 10kHz and a poor one at 50-100Hz. The CRI can also be quite decidedly three bands of R,G,B which you can sometimes see in a diffraction grating (or refraction reflection on a CD) as opposed to a nice even spectrum. Just a couple of side notes as to why getting an experienced company in is a good call

molerat

Aubrey_Thicket wrote: »

All incandescent lights van now be retrofitted with LED's

This is one point I would take issue with. It is not simply a case of replacing the bulbs in many installations. Years ago my employer replaced the old sodium take ages to warm up lamps with fluorescents but mounted them on the same tracks at the same height which meant the cover of the lighting was pretty useless due to the different angles of cover. Have you noticed on street lights how the light pools with dark areas where they have replaced the old sodiums with LEDs on the old posts, the LEDs have a very sharp cut off. In an industrial situation the whole set up generally needs to be re-designed, my old workplace have just had a lighting refit again and they have now put more tracks closer together to do the job.