Lighting Technology Information

Introduction

Lighting is often the single largest electrical consumption and cost in non air conditioned buildings. For example, lighting can account for over 40% of electricity costs in naturally ventilated offices. Good lighting design can reduce these running costs. Attention to fabric detail at the sketch design stage to ensure the integration of day-lighting is particularly important in achieving this.

Improving the efficiency of your lighting is your first and easiest step to reducing energy consumption. The conversion of electricity to light usually represents the least efficient and most wasteful energy conversions in the electrical system using traditional incandescent light bulbs. Energy conversion efficiency can be calculated every time energy is converted from one form to another, i.e from coal electricity and from electricity to light. The conversion of coal to grid electricity at the plug, even including heat loss from power stations and transmission losses down the grid, is around 40%. You could say in this day and age that's pretty poor. However, the final conversion from electricity to light is less than 3% for traditional phosphorescent light bulbs. That is appalling. Energy efficient lights provide the same service but use a fraction of the power thus increasing the efficiency of this final step to 20-50%.

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Key Points

Energy efficient lighting should:

• Maximise natural daylight.
• Avoid unnecessarily high
  illuminance
  .
• Incorporate the most efficient
  luminaires
  , control gear and lamps.
• Lamp and circuit selection is a crucial part of energy efficient design.
• Include effective lighting controls.

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Typical UK System

• A luminaire comprises a housing, a reflector, a lamp and shielding (either louvres, or a lens or diffusing material) and, for discharge lamps, some form of control gear.
• The photometric efficiency is measured in terms of its light output ratio. This is the ratio of the total light output of the luminaire to that of the lamp(s) under reference conditions.
• The higher the light output ratio, for a given light distribution, the more efficient the luminaire.

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Requirements

There are no notable requirements for the installation of energy efficient lighting.

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Costs

Information on the costs of energy efficienct lighting systems will be added here soon.

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FIT/Grants

There are currently no grants available.

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Planning Guidance

As long as no external modifications are undertaken, there should be no planning requirements associated with the installation of new energy efficient lighting at your property

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Further Information

• If you have any outstanding questions once you have looked at all the information pages relating to this technology, please write to us on info@saveandgenerate.com and we will aim to get back to you with an answer ASAP.
• You can also use the above email address to get in touch with our independent energy experts who will more than happy to provide you with tailored project consultancy support if required. Click here to find out more about Save & Generate's Independent Energy Assessment services, or visit the S&G Energy Consultancy web site for more details on our consultancy services.
• Our latest independent energy expert blogs on energy efficiency provide further critical insights into developments within the industry and topics of current debate, including latest Government policy developments. Click here to read more.

Next steps to Save & Generate

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• Use the feasibility function to instantly see how well suited your location is to these technologies
• Use the S&G Get a Quote function to receive FREE, no obligation quotes from the accredited and user rated installers working in your area.
• Once you are happy that you have reduced your energy consumption as far as feasible, why not have a browse of our microgeneration technologies to find out how you can generate your own energy and make money in the process?

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