As an agent for change in Commercial Lighting, Sunwave Lighting designs and implements energy efficient lighting retrofit projects with "State of the Art" Spectrally Enhanced Lighting products and services.
 
Buildings consume the majority of the energy we use here in Boulder, Colorado USA.  Boulder, you may have heard, was the first city in the US to implement a carbon tax.  We did it to try to reduce greenhouse gases as we had signed up to try to meet the reduction targets outlined by the Kyoto protocol .  Unfortunately, even though we are taxing ourselves to reduce them, the green house gas inventory in Boulder keeps going up.   Although we are winning a few battles, we are losing the war. 

In the commercial sector, lighting is roughly 1/3 of the total building energy consumption.   Investing in new Spectrally Enhanced Lighting equipment to save money (and Carbon) and generate a positve cash flow works especially will in combination with an Alternative Energy Project like Net Metered PV.  It combines Energy Efficiency and Conservaton with together generate a positive cash flow from reduced energy bills.  Combining reducing Lighting Loads (automatic dimming near windows and skylights)  with net metered PV and the meter spins backwards more of the time or the size of the PV system can be reduced.   Energy conservation includes automated controls and or renewed manual efforts to simply turning things off when they are not being used.   Well designed projects can reduce the lighting energy load and the electric bill for lighting by 50% to 75% or more.   Many are upgrading older T12 technologies and saving maybe 30%.   And they feel pretty good until they find out that they could have saved 60% for a small incremental investment.  Many are using performance contracting to finance the upgrades off the capital budget and guarantee the savings but they are taking a fairly sure thing with 2.5 year payback and accepting a 4 to 5 year payback to get the financing, give the ESCo a profit, and get the guarantee. 

Saving more energy, getting more cash back from Xcel Energy and helping your employees see better, feel better and work better and helping the environment all come together in lighting.   Best of all, it works now, with existing proven technologies.  It can be implemented now and in parallel, not 10 years from now when a new "Clean Coal" or "Safe Nuclear" plant comes on line.  In fact, if we all did it, we might not even need the new power plants before solar and other technologies reach grid parity.  Companies that become more efficient will out compete those that don't.  Collectively, hundreds of small businesses that become more efficient create new jobs and keep more money circulating in our local communities.  

Reducing electricity consumption for lighting by 50% translates to an over all 15% reduction in total energy and CO2 for a building.  Lighting is still the lowest hanging fruit.  For airconditioned spaces, there is an additional savings in cooling energy as lamps and fixtures run cooler.  Some even borrow money at 8% or 10% or lease the equipment to earn returns at 49% plus for a Positive Cash Flow from day one. 

Most understand that performance and well being of people who work in buildings is enhanced by providing daylighting.  Many don't yet understand that performance and well being are also positively affected by providing better simulated daylighting.  Task Ambient lighting Strategies that gives users control over individual light levels has also been shown to increase productivity.  Turning off lights saves the most energy.  Automatic dimming or Daylight harvesting, Occupancy Sensors, and timer Switches automates the process. 

Many utilities offering generous rebates which buy down the up front costs and provide significant leverage.  Although it sounds too good to be true, the utility Company here, Xcel Energy actually pays my clients money to buy more efficient equipment so they can use less electricity?  Huh?  So far, we can get up to 50% of the retrofit project cost in rebates.   We expect them to become even more aggressive in the near term for their Small Buiness Customers who are underserved.  The PUC has told them make efficiency a higher priority.  Xcel has asked the PUC for another rate increase.  Every dollar invested in efficiency now gets the IOU a 20% return.  And, it turns out that each Kilowatt saved costs Xcel about 2.5 cents while each new killowatt they can produce from a new power plant costs more than 5 cents.   We expect electricity prices to continue to rise.   When was the last time the price of electricity, postage stamp or oil went down?

An Investment in Spectrally Enhanced Energy Efficient Lighting has Triple-Bottom-Line implications, fairly short payback cycles of 2-3 years, and relatively low financial risk.  In many of our projects, we have achieved a payback in < 2 years with an additional 2 more paybacks before even thinking about replacing lamps.  Not only can one improve bottom line results which is Good for Profit, one can also improve the visual comfort, and biological ergonomics of the workplace which is Good for People.  In addition, and one can save a lot of Carbon Dioxide (and other Power Plant emissions), one changes, recycles, and buys new lamps less often in the future which translates into lower lifecycle costs which is Good for the Planet. 

So far, we have changed lightbulbs at NREL, at CU, at Boulder Community Hospital, at the US Geological Survey, at Cheyenne Mountain, .... and at a number of smaller projects in cooperation with the City of Boulder Climate Smart Program and the City's Department of Environmental Affairs.  We've got our (25 watt Sunwave 5550K 93CRI 24,000-30,000 hour TCLP low mercury) and oru 25 watt Glow-Lux lamps (5000K 85 CRI with glow in the dark with no power feature) installed at the Pentagon, at the Coast Guard, at the Johnson Space Center, at the Idaho National Energy Laboratory, at the FBI Forensic Labs, at the Denver Federal Center, and even installed Sunwaves in the offices of William McDonough the noted "Cradle to Cradle" architect.  

The Commercial Lighting Industry is slow to embrace, adopt, promote and sell these new technologies.  Instead, they continuing to sell 2x as many cheap status quo lamps, that last 1/2 as long as the better products.   And they still don't really care that you will be paying twice as much in electicity to run them.  Lowest first cost or cheap plastic crap, that's all Mal Wart or Home Desperate customers want or can afford...  The Comercial lighting companies I deal with do not give rebates if I buy less of their product.  The oil companies don't give rebates when you ride buy the gas station on your bicycle.  Accountants, like farmers, don't go out of their way to kill their cash cows, and snakes don't eat their tails....

In the meantime the Big Box stores continue to sell sick building syndrome T12 lamps (60CRI "Cool White" T12) and the cheapest of the Cheap CFL's with flicker, low color rendition, low power factors, and excessive packing while they resist participating in CFL recycling programs to keep the mercury they sell us out of our landfills, lakes, rivers and streams (out of air from Coal fired power plant emmissions).  This would be disregard for their Corporate Social Responsibility obligations and the well being of their customers and community as they single mindedly persue short-term single-bottom-line profits.   The only way to change it is to stop buying the crap, but since were addicted to the stuff....

While changing lightbulbs mights seem like a small uphill battle, it is one battle that we can not afford to lose.  Take the power factor of the typical CFL.  it is about .50 where 1.0 is good.  Large electric customers get charged a penalty if the power factor of their building drops below 0.95.  That is because the power company actually has to burn and transmitt more VA power on their side of the meter when the power factor drops.  So now we have installed 500,000,000 million cheap Compact fluorescents in our homes.  For maybe 25 cents more per lamp, they could all have a power factor > 0.90 and we would save countless additional CO2.

One only has to see the millions and millions of now standing dead pines in the Colorado High Country to know that we must press onward though the mindless fog.  

 Look around.  Vail Resorts is 100% wind powered.  Big signs on the lift towers tell us so.  I couldn't find one windmill anywhere at any of the ski areas they own, but there were lots and lots of inefficient light bulbs everywhere.   Even in an industry that understands that global warming and dead pine trees will not ultimately be good for business, is 100% wind powered with Incandescent light bulbs green or is it greenwash.  Right now it's mostly hogwash, but in a few years they will be harvesting the methane out of the hog wash and that too will be green.  

So we persist in changing light bulbs in Boulder,  one fixture, one building, one customer at a time.  And it feels good to cash and spend  Xcel Energy Utility rebate checks as a tangible reward for reducing our carbon footprints.    

So when can I expect my gas rebate for riding my bike.  

I'd like to see a snake eat it's tail too. 

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