Last time we discussed why your church should switch to CFL, LED, and/or Induction lighting ASAP to get fast church energy savings. Just how fast will upgrading pay you back? Today we take a look at two examples.
These calculations will depend on electric rates in your area. For this example, we’ll use the national average electricity rate of $0.12 per kilowatt-hours (kWh).
Starting with a simple exercise, our first goal for fast return on investment is to grab the low hanging fruit. For example, let’s say we went through a church’s offices and found 24 lamps with 60-watt incandescent bulbs. If these bulbs are on 8 hours a day for 5 days a week, each year they would use 2,995.2 kilowatt-hours and cost $359.42. That’s $29.95 per month. Let’s see what happens when we replace these energy hogs with CFLs.
Compact Fluorescent Lamp (CFL)
CFLs are well suited for church offices as a direct replacement for 60-watt incandescent bulbs mostly found in reading lamps. At Home Depot, the Feit Electric CFL 12 pack costs $16.47. To replace 24 lights we’ll need two packs making our total cost $32.94 (assuming that we will install them ourselves). Rated at 13 watts each, together they would use 648.98 kilowatt-hours per year and cost $77.88 per year to run. That’s $6.49 a month for lighting in your offices.
On day one of the upgrade, your church will save 78% on this section of lighting with a savings of $23.46 each month. At that rate, it would only take 5 months for the CFL bulbs to pay for themselves. Now that’s fast payback. But that’s not all, savings from using CFLs will continue to compound when you account for the fact that you will have to replace incandescent bulbs 8 times before you would have to replace a CFL.
Light Emitting Diode (LED)
For our second example, let’s replace the same 24 incandescent lamps with 24 LED bulbs instead. At Home depot a 6 pack of 60w equivalent LED bulbs costs $56.82. The total for the 24 bulbs we need is $227.28 for 6 packs. Rated at 9.5 watts each, together they would use 474.24 kilowatt hours per year and cost $56.91 each year when on 8 hours a day 5 days a week. That’s about $4.74 per month.
On day one of this upgrade, your church will save about 84% on this section of lighting with a savings of $23.11 each month. At that rate, it would take just under 10 months for the LED bulbs to pay for themselves.
Yes, the LEDs do cost more upfront and take longer to payback, but again that isn’t the end of the savings story. After the savings are recouped from the initial purchase price, you will save 6% more with LEDs than CFLs on your bill each month. You would have to replace a CFL bulb 5 times before you would replace one LED bulb (according to this comparison chart). Another benefit to switching to LEDs is that they can be paired to dimmer wall switches and also tied into your current lighting board with control over DMX. They also look great in spaces when paired with recessed ceiling pots. It really is time to ditch those incandescents.
In the next post, we will tackle the ROI on switching to LEDs in an example church auditorium. Stay tuned.
