But other types of LED replacement light bulbs provide cost-effective and quality retrofits for many applications, from residential and hospitality projects to the typical display lighting we use in retail stores. Of course, some work and look better than others. The best replacement lamp product in my opinion right now is the PAR38. You can take a retail tracklighting installation and replace it with LED bulbs in the same track and save a phenomenal amount of energy; the payback period is two years and then it’s sort of an annuity. You basically make a $35 investment in the light bulb if you already have the track fixtures and, after the two years it pays itself back, it then keeps paying you until it burns out 40-years later. You actually make money on it during most of the life of the product. It’s an investment worth making.
r: once the lighting system is installed or upgraded, building owners often turn to controls for achieving superior energy efficiency. Wireless controls are easier for existing spaces, but are they a valid option compared to wired?
Benya: There’s a lot of potential for wireless controls and there are several different types: short-range controls that are fairly direct point-to-point and networked controls, which enable you to control a whole building wirelessly.
I happen to like and trust wires. Wires can’t be hacked. They are easy to connect and test. If the building is new or suitably accessible, systems with wired backbones are my preferred choice.
Wireless controls have to operate in the microwave soup we’re creating in buildings. We are often too careless messing around with radio signals, and we risk interference. I worry that we will have so much wireless communication inside of a building that at some point the radio freeway is going to get jammed.
But wireless controls have their place, and I am trying several systems to get a better feel for them. I am fairly confident that they are going to be a good choice for a number of projects, but I am sticking to wires in new construction and many types of retrofits. I highly recommend making a careful choice.
r: There’s been more talk about DC power being an option for powering buildings. Is it?
Benya: You’re hearing a lot of talk but you’re not seeing a lot of it being done. A project I am working on right now is a retrofit of the Electrical Training Institute, an existing building in Southern California. This building involves the National Electrical Contractors Association and International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers and they want to show the public how DC power works. We tried to find enough products to do it. We have a DC photovoltaic system that is large enough for this building to be zero-net energy, so it’s a very exciting project. We tried to find lighting but the distribution components we’d need aren’t out there. There are a few small companies doing small volume in this business but it’s more talk than action at the moment. That said, I think it will be big action within five years. We won’t be talking about it; we’ll just be doing it.
r: What advice would you give our readers about achieving energy efficiency with lighting?
Benya: I think the hardest lighting design to do today is something attractive and super energy efficient. Less is more. Less is relatively easy to do, but you must have some expertise because you have to narrow your technology and know how to use it efficiently and know how to put in just the right amount. There’s an art to it.
We also must remember, energy doesn’t stop with lighting. In researching California, I found the single biggest electrical load in office buildings is portable space heaters. One in 10 people in office buildings in Northern and Southern California has one. I only found one building in all my surveys where there was not a single space heater. I talked to the building engineer there, and he said there’s a $500 fine for the first one the fire marshal finds in the building and it goes up from there.
We also know the typical office building uses way more energy for computers than for lights. You start to realize that if you’re going to control energy use, you should look at everything. Remember, watts are not energy; watts are power, and energy is power times time. A 1-millionwatt light bulb that never turns on uses no energy. Of course, you can have people shivering in the dark to save energy too, but it isn’t exactly high quality.