The Importance of Lighting Maintenance

March 14, 2013

Each month, Worldwide Energy Vice President and COO Gaylen Davenport will publish his thoughts on the latest energy-efficient news, products, and trends.

It's often overlooked, but proper lighting maintenance is a large part of reducing utility bills, especially for businesses where lighting accounts for an estimated 20 percent of the total energy used in commercial buildings.

More often than not, many businesses do not have a detailed lighting maintenance policy other than replacing burned-out bulbs. Poor lighting maintenance can lead to visual degradation, reducing worker productivity, and contribute to higher utility costs. Having an effective lighting maintenance policy includes having written procedures, training, management oversight, and inventory control.

Principles of Lighting Maintenance

A cost-effective way to reduce the overall cost of lighting is proper maintenance, which is often overlooked. Lighting levels tend to decrease over time because of aging light fixtures and gathering dust and film on lamps. This can reduce the total illumination by up to 50 percent.

Basic maintenance strategies can include cleaning the fixtures every 6-24 months, replacing lenses if they appear yellow, and considering group light replacement, which can help save on labor costs, keeps illumination high, and avoids stressing ballasts with dying lamps.

The second part of proper lighting maintenance for a business is developing a policy to serve as a guideline, not only for everyday maintenance practices, but for optimizing lighting systems on a year round basis.

The policy should include things like blueprints of the facility, fixture schedules, equipment and service provider contacts, procedures for relamping, and an overview of proper lamp and ballast disposal.

Providing proper training should also be included in a lighting maintenance plan such as cleaning, lamp and fixture replacement, and fixture inspection. Maintenance personnel should also be aware of different lighting types and the relative costs of each in a lighting system. Working with lighting professionals is an added bonus to maintaining knowledge of any new technologies or policy changes.

Replacing Lights and Fixtures

Finally, replacing lights and fixtures is an essential part of lighting system maintenance. There are two types of replacement: spot and group replacement. Spot replacement is replacing lamps as they burn out, and is the most commonly used technique in traditional maintenance programs.

Group replacement is replacing a set of lamps all at once. Many studies have shown that group replacements have higher lamp costs, while spot replacement requires higher labor costs. However, group replacement has a number of advantages over spot replacement including being easier to oversee and schedule.

Lighting systems are a main source of utility costs, and can deteriorate overtime, while continuing to use the same amount of energy. You can reduce utility bills and improve lighting efficiency through proper lighting maintenance.

 

By Gaylen Davenport

One comment on “The Importance of Lighting Maintenance”

Leave a Reply

What Our Clients are Saying

  • “Since the installation we cannot say enough great things about [the] company. Not only were installers professional and efficient, but there was no interference with our day to day production during installation. We immediately have noticed a savings in our energy bills.”
    -Justin Kelly, Tompkins Industries Inc.
    Learn More
  • “Worldwide Energy was very professional through the whole process. They handled everything from start to finish. I would highly recommend Worldwide Energy to anyone looking to improve their lighting and control utility costs. They take care of everything, it’s easy.”
    -Shawn Wakeman, Frank Ancona Honda
    Learn More
  • “Our project was completed in a timely manner with excellent results. All changes requested were completed and the crew was willing to do whatever it took to make us happy.”
    -Bill Keefer, Westlake Ace Hardware
    Learn More
  • “After considering several companies, we selected Worldwide Energy to do our lighting retrofit, primarily because their proposal was total turnkey and provided the most complete level of service.”
    -Mike Gonnerman, ROM Corporation
    Learn More
Ⓒ 2022 Worldwide Energy

Stay up to date with us

apartmentuserscrossmenucheckmark-circle linkedin facebook pinterest youtube rss twitter instagram facebook-blank rss-blank linkedin-blank pinterest youtube twitter instagram