Go to School with LED Lighting
August, 2016
Jeff Pinyot
Colleges and universities are ripe picking for lighting manufacturers these days. It’s nearly impossible for a contractor to propose a lighting retrofit to an institution without a return-on-investment with yields between 25% and as high as 90%. Unless your university’s endowment is invested in a marijuana farm in Denver, yields like these are rarely seen.
An old business associate once told me, “Don’t let your nickel hold up a dollar!” He also told me that when he wakes up in the morning, if he doesn’t see his picture in the obituary section of the Indianapolis Star, he heads into the office.
Bottom line here: If you truly believe that you don’t have the money that you need to do the project, you are not correct. You do have it in your monthly spend on energy and maintenance. A lighting retrofit will cost less per month than the savings you will realize from the change. It’s that simple. Ironically, you don’t need a college or university degree to understand the simplicity of that statement!
Dr. Kent Brantly is a name you might recognize, but certainly not like you would that of Dr. Ben Carson, and his association with Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. The neurosurgeon and former presidential candidate performed heroic procedures at Johns Hopkins; Brantly served sacrificially, and had his life saved at Emory University in Atlanta. After contracting the Ebola virus, Brantley was flown from Liberia to Emory, which is adjacent to the Centers for Disease Control, for treatment.
Brantly is a graduate of my children’s small private school in Indianapolis, Heritage Christian. My company is proud to have provided the lighting at both Johns Hopkins and Emory. We also are proud to have provided lighting at the Indiana University campus in Indianapolis, where Brantly earned his medical degree.
What does this have to do with LED lighting? Nothing, it’s just a huge honor that the nation’s top medical campuses chose us to serve them.
LED lighting belongs on campuses of higher education. The technology is the result of incredible study, testing and research, as with the facilities that they serve.
The goal of lighting a parking garage is to provide a safe and secure environment. LED lighting does that. In its glare-free form (now available through most manufacturers), the lighting technology easily holds lighting levels (measured in foot-candles) in excess of industry standards.
After a side-by-side analysis of the top-rated LED lighting fixtures in the industry, Emory University chose the ECO FlexTech LED for its Lower Gate and Michael Street decks. Making the move to LED equated to a 68% energy savings on Lower Gate and 76% on Michael Street.
Advances in LED are like headlines on TMZ: who is seen with whom, and what are they wearing these days? Speaking of what they are wearing, technological advances are changing traditional lighting forever.
Take the new lights that can be seen wearing new Falcon Vision, which was introduced at the IPI show in Nashville. Incorporating parking guidance and lighting into the same device will change forever the way garages are illuminated. This new “Concierge Lighting” category is a place to watch for the latest advances in lighting and technology related to the parking industry.
With cheap money available to borrow, even after the cost burden of the lending, the lighting projects pay huge dividends on college and university campuses.
Your action plan:
1. Assess your lighting needs. If you still have any of the following lighting technologies in your parking structure, go to step #2: metal-halide, high-pressure-sodium (yellow), T12, or T8 fluorescent.
2. Contact a reputable, full-service, turnkey provider for a free estimate and return-on-investment analysis.
3. Get ready to save money and win some award for being smart!
Contact Jeff Pinyot, President of ECO Lighting Solutions/ECO Parking Lights, at jspinyot@ecoparkinglights.com.
