Lighting

How can lighting make a difference in my business?

Because it’s easy to track, most people think about costs or savings on their electricity bill as benefits of new lighting. But there’s more to consider such as safety, maintenance, productivity and perception.

Let’s start with energy and maintenance. For the same lumens (brightness) as your traditional HID or CFL lighting, LED provides better light quality and coverage with a savings of 60% or more in electricity usage. When you add in lighting controls, the savings can be upwards of 80%. Reductions like that are hard to ignore, especially when lighting typically accounts for 40% to 60% of your electric bill.

LED bulbs can last up to 100,000 hours at optimal brightness. Imagine the time your work crews will save by not having to pull out ladders or 40-foot lifts to change out bulbs, not to mention the aggravation of blocking an aisle or causing downtime. When you remove the expense of replacement lamps and ballasts along with the labor to change them, it is an extremely compelling story. Here’s the best part. Local utilities will often provide rebates to make the upgrade even more attractive.

Can I save Money?

Safety & Savings

LED lights simply produce better quality light. They are designed to direct and diffuse light so that you have better light coverage and fewer dark spots. They minimize contrast and glare, helping to reduce the chance for accidents and eye strain. And when you add controls, you only use the light when and where you need it. When you do need it, the lights turn on instantly. The icing on the cake is that they are environmentally friendly.

Productivity is another area where new lighting can produce noticeable gains. A warehouse manager said her pickers previously used flashlights to see inside boxes on shelves. In fact, MWPVL reports that 2% of picking errors occur because the employees can’t see barcodes. We’ve seen that adequate task lighting can improve productivity by 10% to 50%. Apply these percentages to your business metrics and you can see that it adds up quickly.