Does your Facility Maintenance Services Help to Conserve Energy?

With the increasing prices of energy and the public becoming more energy conscious, plenty of attention has been given in finding ways to detect and prevent wasted energy. Today whenever we buy a product that consumes energy it comes with an Energy Star rating which is a government-backed (EPA) program helping businesses and individuals protect the environment through superior energy efficiency.  The same awareness goes out when it comes to conservation of energy through lighting in office buildings. One question which is being raised in the community, is whether energy reducing methods compromise lighting quality and quantity. As a result, more and more office buildings of today’s generation have become lighting energy conscious and have started taking steps to reduce the unnecessary waste by monitoring the usage.

You can play your part in this lighting energy saving movement by upgrading fixtures in your building office with energy-efficient lamps and ballasts. Adding state-of-the-art lighting controls in selected areas for daylight harvesting and dimming can also help. This also calls for upgrading heating, ventilation, and air conditioning controls. Once completed, the effort can help to achieve a 20 to 25 percent reduction in total energy consumption, and approximately thousands of dollars  in annual energy savings.

Lighting Energy Consumption Ratio by Office Department:

Now that we’ve discussed about the energy consumption by lighting in different areas of offices, let’s talk about what can be done to preserve this energy. This can be done in two ways: one is by the user and the other is by the operation manager's of office buildings.

Lighting Energy conservation measures by users

Lighting conservation measures are carried out by the users and correspond to users’ efforts as well as elimination of waste including “lights-off during lunch break”, etc. These actions to minimize the load are the first step towards energy conservation measures. In most buildings, lighting accounts for about 25% of the total demand for electrical energy. Now that most reading and writing is performed on computers, light levels should be lower to eliminate glare and eye strain. Consider leaving half the lights in private offices and partition areas off to reduce ambient light levels and installing an appropriate task light on desks for paperwork.

Major Lighting energy conservation measures:

• Turn off the lights in unused rooms
• Turn off the lights during lunch break.

Lighting Energy conservation measures by operations:

Lighting energy conservation measures by operations are to operate the current facility efficiently and to rationalize the use of lighting. The measures are the basis of  lighting management in which energy conservation is promoted without imposing a burden to users. Good Facility Maintenance Services can assist in finding energy savings.

Major Lighting energy conservation measures:

• Subdivide the lighting circuits, put together the operations.
• Exchange the stabilizer of the existing lighting fixtures to an inverter type.
• Re-new to high-efficiency lighting fixtures and light sensors which turn on and off automatically if particular room is not being used and eliminate the equation of people forgetting to turn off the lights after finishing work.
• Energy-efficient lamps
• Adding state-of-the-art lighting controls
• A Fluorescent lamp gives 5 times the light and last up to 8 times longer than ordinary light bulbs. The bulb wattage does not measure the amount of light it gives, but the amount of energy it consumes.

Therefore, the best and most efficient way to conserve lighting energy is by eliminating the unnecessary usage of light.

Stathakis can help with you find energy savings with lighting updating in your facility. We can find you light sensor savings that average less than a three year return.  We can also help you with affordable light bulb replacement solutions or any of your other lighting maintenance needs.  

MLA: "ENERGY SAVING MEASURES FOR OFFICE BUILDING TENANTS." Insert Name of Site in Italics. N.p., n.d. Web. 30 July 2012 <http://www.accenv.com/documents/EnergyMeasuresforTenants.pdf>.