Power Saving Survey

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georgeswe

georgeswe

Senior Member
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The Republic of Southern California
I have a long time customer that had me come to his sire and give him a proposal for lighting contol system that would integrate lots of motion sensors in his parking structure to save money on his lighting bill. I had a professional outside salesman from a "big" lighting control company come out and help me with the design. However, the customer is asking me how much money he will save "IF" we go ahead with the project so he will know how fast he will recoup his cost. Can anyone give me any good ideas of how i can survey (or hire a company) see the usage and calculate possible savings??? Or if there may be some sort of program out there that would help me do this???

any ideas?

Thanks

Georgeswe
 
Getting the base now should be no problem utilizing a recording meter or even a hand held one time meter as the usage should be pretty flat.

Calculating the time off and time on would be the major variable, depending on the users of the garage.

But with the knowledge from the full load one should be able to guess-timate a rough idea. I would discuss with him and the lighting guy the expected time on off of the fixtures.
 
The parking structures are approx 600 ft long and about 60 ft wide. they get plenty of light during the day so all the lighting circuits are off but at night time all three floors are burning no matter what the occupency. What I proposed was about 20 motion sensors per floor each running about 3 linear flourecent light rows of about 30ft each. Each row has its own circuit. and its all run inside of the concrete since it is a post tension deck.
 
is there any electrical on the service outside of lights like elevators and such? you also have to find out what the state building code requires for lighting in the structure? You need to know what type of fixtures are already there. than you can do the math I know of no program to calculate the cost. I do it long hand (on paper ) the old fashion way..there are variables like like fixture start times, how many cycles are the ballast good for, up front costs, repair costs, bulb replacement costs, bulb cycle times, and reliability of sensors, and some other thing I am sure I missed..
 
Can't the salesman from the 'big' lighting control company be able to answer that? Seems that should be part of his/her job.
 
My lighting rep would be salivating over this project . . .

My last lighting project was three gigantic hot dip galvanized standards on 120 foot concrete poles to illuminate a 'skid strip' (aircraft landing area). The rep did the design calcs, submittals, followed up, and even helped me validate the lighting pattern, till midnight.

Sounds like your lighting rep needs to leave his A/Cd office, and work for his lunch.

Best Wishes
 
I wonder if retrofitting a system would have any payback, especially balanced against the possibility of failure, and subsequent litigation.

If the place is only powered at night, is off-peak metering possible?
 
georgeswe said:
The parking structures are approx 600 ft long and about 60 ft wide. they get plenty of light during the day so all the lighting circuits are off but at night time all three floors are burning no matter what the occupency. What I proposed was about 20 motion sensors per floor each running about 3 linear flourecent light rows of about 30ft each. Each row has its own circuit. and its all run inside of the concrete since it is a post tension deck.
Click to expand...
Probably can get by with less sensors.
To calculate:
  1. get the number of entries/exits per month DURING the nighttime hours,
  2. multiply the above with .166 hours to get the total expected lighting hours,
  3. divide the typical electric bill by the hours in a month,
  4. multiply 2 with 3 and the result should be your new electric bill.
 
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