This is the fourth article in our latest series: Calculating Your Savings and ROI on any Lighting Project. Please also see: Calculating your Lighting Only Energy Savings, Calculating Your HVAC Energy Savings, Calculating your Maintenance Savings, Calculating your ROI.
From the previous calculations found in our blog Calculating your Maintenance Savings Part 1, you already know that more labor is spent maintaining old, non-energy efficient lamps than on LED lighting. Your halogen, CFL, and fluorescent lamps had an average lamp life of 1,500 to 15,000 hours. If your lamps are at the lower end, you’re replacing each one two to three times a year.
That is a lot of time going up and down ladders that you or a designated employee could be spending on other productive tasks. If you hire a contractor to replace burned-out lamps, it’s an additional company expense.
LED lamp life is noticeably longer. On average, LED lighting has a rated life of 35,000 to 100,000 hours. A longer lamp lifespan means that it won’t need replacing as often, but how much labor savings can a company expect from a LED retrofit lighting project?

Step-By-Step Calculations for Labor Savings in an LED Retrofit

To find out how much your company is saving annually on labor with a LED retrofit, you’ll need to get some information. You’ll need the wattage of the old and new lamps, along with hours and number of days of usage. Finally, you’ll need to know your electricity rate.
Once you’ve gathered the information you can perform the step-by-step calculations to determine your LED labor maintenance savings.

• The annual number of replacements for old lamps. In previous calculations from Calculating your Maintenance Savings – Part 1, lamps were replaced 2.88 times per year.
• The annual number of times LED lamps are replaced. Prior equations show that you replace LED lamps 0.09 times per year.
• Time to change the lamp. There isn’t an exact time it should take to change a lamp. It also depends on the employee or service provider on how fast they are. It does take time to get a ladder, safely climb up, and switch out the lamp, or even maneuver a lift if you have one. For this sample calculation, we’ll go with an average of 8 minutes.
• Hourly rate for lighting maintenance. The hourly rate will depend on if an employee is changing burned-out lamps or a service provider. An average hourly wage for LED lighting maintenance is $45. We’ll use this when we’re calculating maintenance savings.

Every business is different, and you might need to schedule a meeting with a lighting specialist if you use a service provider. For this sample equation, we’re using averages for the amount of time to change the lamp and the hourly maintenance cost.
8 (number of minutes to change the lamp) ÷ 60 (number of minutes in an hour) x 45 (hourly maintenance rate) = $ 5.99.

You now know that it costs the company $5.99 to change a single non-energy efficient lamp. The next step is to find the total maintenance cost. For this equation, you’ll need the number of times the lamp is replaced annually. You learned how to calculate replacement costs in Calculating your Maintenance Savings – Part 1, for this example, we’ll use 2.88.
The equation is as follows,
2.88 (annual number of times a lamp is replaced) x $5.99 = $17.25 is how much you’ll spend on labor and replacement lamps for each individual light fixture.

You’ll use the same calculations to determine annual labor costs for LED lamps as you did in step 3.
0.09 (number of times an LED lamp needs replacing annually) x $5.99 (labor cost per LED lamp) = $0.54 in annual labor and replacement costs. It is significantly cheaper than replacing old halogen, CFL, and fluorescent lamps.

Now that you have all of the information you need; you can calculate your labor savings with your LED retrofit lighting project. The equation is simple. You subtract the annual replacement and labor costs for LED lighting from your non-energy efficient lamps.
$17.25 (labor/maintenance costs for old lamps) – $0.54 (labor/maintenance costs for LED lamps) = $16.24 in labor savings for each lamp per year.

Know Your LED Labor Savings

There is a noticeable labor-savings per LED lamp compared to non-energy efficient ones. If you multiply the savings by the total number of lamps, it’s easy to see why it makes sense to switch to LED lighting. To speak with an Action Services Group lighting specialist, call Action Services group today at 610-558-9773, email info@actionservicesgroup.com or schedule a car.