From Guest Blogger "Applied Environmentalist" — LEDs In The Work Place

In a large warehouse, employees work tirelessly at all hours of the day—with the help of hundreds or thousands of lights.

Commercial spaces—like large warehouses—can be energy suckers, with a significant amount of energy being used to light indoor and outdoor areas. With some being open nearly everyday for extended hours, energy usage can pile up quickly. Parking lot lights, ceiling lights, display lights. Someone needs to see it, they need to illuminate it. And providing energy to these lights can seem insurmountable.

With decreasing prices and incentives from energy utilities, LED lighting has become the answer for commercial lighting. Unlike outdated lighting techniques, LEDs use a higher percentage of energy for generating light instead of waste heat. And unlike CFLS, they don’t contain toxic substances. Most LEDs have a life of over 60,000 hours, and the newest LED modules can last longer than an incredible 90,000 hours. To put it simply, LEDs last a lot longer while using only a fraction of watts that other types of lighting use. In addition to being environmentally friendly, LEDs have superior lighting quality and result in a huge return on investment.

For example, a large warehouse uses 400 250 watt metal-halide high bay fixtures to light the interior of the building. For only one hour, the warehouse uses 100,000 watts exclusively on these fixtures. By replacing the existing fixtures with 500 24 watt LED high bay fixtures, the warehouse would only use 12,000 watts. If the warehouse has the lights on 5 days a week for 14 hours, this is a difference of nearly $50,000 a year in energy costs (at $0.15/watt)—only on these lights!

For green companies, deciding to invest in energy-efficient lighting has become the obvious solution to reduce energy and help the environment.