Taking the Benefits of LED Lighting Retrofits Further
As a facility manager or person responsible for maintaining lighting in your facilities, you already know that a retrofit is a valuable LED lighting solution for reducing your energy costs while also improving illumination. As a result, employees are more productive, people feel safer, and — in retail environments — products even sell better.
These are common goals with LED retrofits. Companies want to save money on energy, enjoy rebates from energy companies, and improve lighting in their facilities. A distant fourth was potential cost savings on maintenance. The problem here is that maintenance can be a hefty expense — particularly when it’s not a priority.
Over time, outdated lighting systems begin to cost more due to wear and tear and reduced performance. These systems need to be maintained on periodic cycles to ensure proper illumination and to prevent energy costs from getting out of control. While LED upgrades and retrofits are a solution, another challenge is that multiple components need to be serviced or replaced, adding to material costs and service costs.
One of these components is the ballast — a device that manages the light output of a lamp. It regulates how current flows through the lamp at startup and while it’s on. There’s more to ballasts than this brief description, but a good analogy is that it’s the heart of a lighting system because it regulates overall operation. However, they present a problem: they’re another maintenance cost. Furthermore, in addition to the rising costs of ballasts, some ballasts — for older lighting technologies — have reduced production, bringing older forms of lighting to an obsolete level.
How Ballast Elimination Improves Maintenance Savings
Removing ballasts from your lighting systems is a newer concept. Previously, LED lighting retrofit conversions would involve replacing lamps as well as ballasts. While lighting became more efficient, this meant that each fixture in your facilities — times the number of facilities that you operate — would require multiple components to replace or upgrade. It also meant more time for the crews doing the conversion work, which factors into the overall maintenance cost as well. Previous LED conversions entailed converting ballasts to LED drivers, meaning fixtures still had two failure points.
There’s another complication with this. With both a lamp and a ballast, it can be difficult to tell which one was burnt out or having a performance problem without getting up into the fixture, which could require additional equipment such as a lift. Not knowing which was having the issue means that you’d likely spring for replacing them both. That means you’re spending more upfront for something you don’t even know is broken!
Rather than deal with a ballast, LED lighting solutions today allow for the lamp to be direct-wired — avoiding dealing with a ballast entirely during installation and for ongoing maintenance afterward. Furthermore, installing modern LED technology increases the lifespan “burn hours” of your lighting by 200 to 400%, providing even more dynamic maintenance savings. Multiple industries have already invested in retrofits without ballasts including retailers, restaurants, and office buildings.
When coupled with products that have a 10-year warranty, you’re creating thousands of dollars in maintenance savings that can be equal to energy savings.
Lean on LED Lighting Solutions That Help You Save
In today’s economic environment, it’s critical that facility managers and other leaders look for ways to reduce expenses while maximizing performance of their facilities and the assets that keep them functional. With no-ballast LED lighting solutions, your organization can avoid the costs of replacing old T-5, T-8, T-12, and HID lamps and ballasts. Simply convert those assets to LED and start saving — and partner with CLS Facility Services to make it happen.
As an aggregator with a network of vendors and suppliers across the country, CLS Facility Services helps facility leaders, operations managers, procurement teams, and others to design, implement, manage, and report on facility and asset maintenance programs with unparalleled precision and customer service. For more than 50 years, we’ve helped companies across multiple industries with anywhere from several dozen to a few hundred locations increase asset uptime, reduce costs, and gain better oversight of their asset management programs — and we’re ready to do the same for you.
Get in touch with us today to learn more about our LED lighting solutions.
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