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Can A Lighting Retrofit Save You Money?

Tuesday, August 16, 2016
Are you achieving the highest level of energy efficiency in your facility? Lighting represents a significant percentage of your overall energy consumption and should be analyzed as part of any energy audit. Choosing the right lighting may not only pay for the new equipment necessary in a lighting retrofit, but produce an additional return on investment. How do you know if a lighting retrofit is worth the initial investment?


  1. Compare apples to apples. Compare your existing system to the proposed retrofit system, which should include more energy efficient lamps and ballasts at a comparable light output.
  2. Remember your key statistics. Take into consideration hours per operation each year, wattage per fixture, and energy consumption per year to determine your annual energy savings with a retrofit.
  3. Determine your payback. Net installation cost over annual energy savings will determine your years to payback. You can find more useful formulas like these in this article by lightsearch.com.
  4. Present a variety of options. Increase your chances of receiving the green light from senior management by presenting these numbers for a variety of retrofit options. Some utilities offer programs that reward lower energy consumption with rebates that can make a retrofit even more attractive.
  5. Recycle post-retrofit.




A lighting retrofit can leave you with a great deal of spent fluorescent lamps and ballasts, which may be regulated under State and Federal Universal Waste Regulation. Does your retrofit plan also include a recycling plan that documents your recycling activities? The EasyPak program from Air Cycle provides easy-to-use packages for safely mailing in spent lamps and ballasts, pre-paid for recycling at one of our many partner facilities in 48 states.

With VaporShield technology, our pre-paid mail-in fluorescent lamp recycling containers are designed to make recycling your spent lamps faster and safer than ever before. Learn more about safely packaging your VaporShield boxes by watching this quick video on our blog.

And, if you are dealing with a large retrofit, involving thousands of lamps, our Bulb Eater lamp crushing systems can eliminate the need for boxing, labeling, and palletizing hundreds of boxes of lamps. A single drum can contain as many as 1,350 four foot linear fluorescents.


Whether picking up drums of crushed lamps or pallets of boxed lamps, we offer a bulk pick-up and recycling service throughout the lower 48 states.