Winner : Lighting retrofits lead efforts to conserve energy
During the next two years, 148 GE Industrial manufacturing plants and warehouses worldwide — 110 in the Americas, 36 in Europe and two in Asia — will undergo extensive lighting retrofits that could cut annual lighting energy costs an average of 50% at each facility.
Based on extensive energy-savings analysis conducted at 65 of the 148 facilities, the retrofit will allow each location, on an average annualized basis, to reduce energy consumption by 1.4 million KwH and realize approximately $86,000 in energy cost savings. Estimates for the completed 148-facility retrofit include reducing energy consumption by 210.5 million KwH and saving $12.8 million in energy costs, annually, when compared with the older lighting.
Another forecasted environmental benefit is producing 155,700 fewer metric tons of CO2, which equates to the pollution from nearly 30,000 average-sized cars or the good that comes from planting more than 70 square miles of trees.
In August 2004, before GE launched its ecomagination environmental initiative, Jack Fish, vice president of global manufacturing, GE Consumer and Industrial, asked his team to devise a plan to cut energy costs by 20%. He wanted to counter forecast energy price increases that were sure to affect the profitability of GE Consumer and Industrial's Appliances, Lighting, Lighting Systems and Electrical Distribution operating units.
Conversations with plant managers and lighting executives kept returning to lighting retrofits, which the lighting unit had been promoting externally among customers as the fastest way to slow down watt-hour meters, and thereby cut wasteful spending on energy.
“An overall cost-of-light calculation used by the Lighting business sealed the deal,” notes Fish.
The calculation points out that as little as 4% of the overall cost of light may be attributable to the cost of lamps. Eight percent is commonly traced to installation and maintenance, while the majority, as much as 88%, represents energy consumption. (These percentages are approximations. Actual costs vary based on local electricity and labor rates, the nature of the facility, the type of lighting installed and other factors.)
“Very few GE Consumer and Industrial plants were using energy-efficient linear fluorescent lamps,” reports Fish. “We simply weren't taking our own good advice. Now, though, we're on track to achieve a 50% reduction in lighting energy consumption at these plants. That's two-and-a-half times our initial savings target.”
In many of the plants targeted for retrofits — 10 plants have been converted as of January 2006 — older technologies such as standard high-pressure sodium or standard metal halide lamps are the previous lamps of choice. Primary elements of each upgrade are six-lamp T8 High Bay linear fluorescent systems featuring UltraMax electronic ballasts, which cut power consumption by more than 50% — from 465 to 220 watts per fixture at the ballast. This energy-saving choice also dramatically upgrades the quality of light. With the new T8 lamps, the color-rendering index (CRI) climbs to 80 from 22 CRI for standard high-pressure sodium lamps or 65 CRI for standard metal halide lamps. The horizontal foot-candle measurement — how wide light spreads out as it's projected from a fixture — more than triples.
General Electric, www.gelighting.com.
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