Lighting energy efficiency has dramatically increased since the days of Edison’s light bulb. In our office and retail spaces we’ve seen large improvements in fluorescent style lighting. From 180 Watt four lamp T12 fixtures in the 1980’s, to 110 Watt T8 fixtures in the 1990’s, and now 36 Watt LED fixtures with just two lamps (in some cases), energy used for lighting has gone down by up to 80%. This has significant impact on building electrical costs, carbon footprint and emissions, and for a few spaces, required changes in HVAC systems to account for less heat produced by lighting.
But another interesting issue to consider is what’s next? When changing from T12 to T8 lamps, the savings per fixture was 70 Watts – creating enough savings to justify retrofit. Likewise, changing the T8 lights to LED produced another 70 Watts of savings. The next improvement will have only 36 Watts to work with, which can only be saved with a zero energy light (which is impossible, of course). I suspect we’ll stick with LED lights for a time, and improvements be small and only for new construction. But I think even Thomas Edison would be impressed with today’s LED lights. – Steve Terry, DTC HVAC & Refrigeration Instructor
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