Commercial property owners have a large influx of bills every month, and it can be exceedingly difficult to keep track of exactly which parts of your operations can be run more or less efficiently. One cost often overlooked is the energy costs associated with parking lot lighting and illumination. Keeping your areas of business well-lit provides patrons with a safe and inviting place to visit. Still, the energy requirements of a large parking lot might end up totaling hundreds or thousands of dollars every single year. In this blog, we will discuss some cost-cutting measures that will lower your parking lot lighting bills.
LED Lights
The most significant savings will undoubtedly come from ensuring all of your fixtures use LED lights. Commercial-grade LED lights are 65-80% more efficient than previous industry standards, meaning significantly lower costs for you and your business. There are two ways to integrate LED light fixtures into your properties: retrofitting old lights or installing new LED fixtures.
If your commercial parking lot is well established and in good working order, completely replacing all of the fixtures might not be necessary. Still, the current fixtures should be worked on to enable them to work with LED bulbs. Local electricians can rewire the fixtures and make slight modifications to the bulb holdings, allowing energy-efficient bulbs to provide lighting to your lot. Older light fixtures and their ability to efficiently use LED bulbs vary, but this solution doesn’t require as expensive of an initial investment. Furthermore, your next time changing out the bulbs will be much simpler, as the infrastructure is already in place. Simply replace the bulbs and continue to take advantage of their energy-efficient savings.
Replacing the fixtures and installing ones designed to house LED bulbs is best if you have a large initial investment, want the highest quality lighting, or plan large-scale renovations on an older lot anyway. Light fixtures designed explicitly for LEDs provide more space between the components, which dissipates heat and increases the lifespan of the bulb. Depending on the size of your commercial parking lot, the newer LED installations can pay for themselves within a period of a few years.
Cost Cutting Tips
Besides changing out the bulbs, there are still areas to investigate that can lead to more savings. When swapping to newer fixtures and LED bulbs, you might notice that some areas of the lot now receive more lighting than is required. There are a few ways to take advantage of this.
To start, some fixtures might be unnecessary. If your lighting needs can be met by using a smaller amount of higher-quality fixtures, some of those fixtures do not need to be powered on or maintained extensively. You shouldn’t cut corners and fail to provide a brightly lit parking lot for your customers or tenants, but there may be situations where you are currently overboard on lights.
You can also employ timers that will turn off and on at different parts of the day based on your needs and the current season. Florida receives sunlight far into the night at certain parts of the year, and adjusting your lighting schedule to coincide with the changing sunset times can lead to small but incremental savings throughout the course of a year. Reducing the number of lights during the dead of night can also provide savings if it does not coincide with times when customers or tenants are at the building or parked in the commercial parking lot.
Promise Electric is Sarasota’s premier electrical services company, delivering exceptional results to both residential and commercial clients.
