Template:425inprogress

Introduction

By upgrading lighting components to more efficient and advanced technologies, lighting retrofits can greatly reduce energy consumption and lower energy bills while maintaining lighting levels and quality. These new technologies often have better lighting-quality characteristics, such as improved color, reduced flicker and greater light output for a given energy input. Improvements in lighting technologies can also lead to increased lifetimes for components that will reduce failures and frequency of maintenance activities.

Consuming less electricity will also aid to reduce the demand and associated emissions from “off-site” power generation. Facilities that are served by photo-voltaic or other green-power systems can experience complementary benefits from these upgrades since the reduction in demand will make these alternative power systems more economically and technically feasible.

The case for replacing existing T12 bulbs and magnetic ballasts with new T8 bulbs and electronic ballasts will be presented here. A general overview of this retrofit is provided along with a spreadsheet designed to calculate the economic viability of this energy conservation measure for a user-defined scenario.

Comparison of different Linear Fluorescent Lamps

Linear fluorescent lamps are classified by their tube diameter based on a scale of eighths for an inch. For example, a T12 lamp has a diameter of 12/8 or 1.5 inches, and a T8 lamp has a diameter of 8/8 or 1 inch. A code marked near one end of the tube indicates the size of the lamp (Green Energy Parks Partnership).

T12 lamps are the most common type of lamp found in industrial and commercial settings, constituting more than 50% of the total population of fluorescent lights sold in North America. Despite its popularity the T-12 lamp is headed towards obsolescence as more efficient alternatives are utilized (mainly T-8’s).

Efficient T-8 lamp technology reduces the required power (28-32W from 40W) to run the lamp while maintaining similar light levels (to within 10% of T-12 lamps). There has also been the development of T-5 lamps. Although the T-5 lamps are more efficient than T-8 lamps, the technology at this point is almost completely exclusive to new construction for the following reasons:

  • No Retrofit Opportunity
    • Due to different metric length of lamp new fixtures are required. The T-8 lamps however can use existing T-12 lamp fixtures.
    • Substantially higher tube luminance, which is likely to cause glare problems with existing lighting strategies.
  • Little to no efficacy improvement over T-8 lamps
  • More expensive than T-8 lamps

Benefits of T8 Retrofit

Cost to Upgrade

Cookies help us deliver our services. By using our services, you agree to our use of cookies.