The little ones that add up

So, I used to run my kitchen lighting as follows:

1. Ceiling light 2x 14W  Cfl bulbs, probably 8 hours a day - 224W/day 
2. and 2x 50W PAR20 flood lights, probably 3 hours a day - 300W/day
3. as well as another 27 watt Cfl in a desk lamp say 3 hours a day - 81W/day
4. 224 + 300+ 81 W = 605W/day, at 30.5 days/ mo = 18.5 kWh at ca 33 cents/kWh = $6.11/mo

But now I changed my 2 50W PAR20 floods to 2 8W R20 LEDs, and the pattern changes

1. Ceiling Light 2x 14W Cfl - 3 hours a day = 84W/day
2. Floodlights 2x 8W 8 hrs/day = 128W/day
3. Desk lamp 27W 3 hrs = 81W/day
4. 84 + 128+81 = 293W/day times 30.5 days =  8.94 kWh/mo at 33 cents = $2.95/mo.

The savings therefore are $3.16/mo and the bulbs cost me $16.08 including tax or $32.16 total, and my payback at this rate is 10 months. And that calculation does not even take into account they have an expected 30,000 hour life span, versus an average expectancy of 10,000 hours or so for CFl bulbs.

In short, this is a winner. And actually, now that I'm switching to the fixture with the two PAR20 lamps for my main 'background' lighting, I'll probably have them running at 30% most of the time and at full strength perhaps no more than two hours a day. So if that's the case, the floodlights will use 64W/day instead of 128W/day, for 229W total per day and the monthly number becomes  6.98 kWh at $0.33 for $2.30 total monthly cost.

If you can see little opportunities like that, saving energy is actually fun. I better start buying some energy guzzling equipment soon, for I'm already at the top of my class of residence, averaging 218 kWh/mo even before this change. I also just signed up for the CoolNYC program (www.coolnycprogram.com), which should reduce my A/C bills this summer, Plus, you get $25 for participating. You get a bonus for saving money. Cool! Literally.

Of course the above is also the way energy companies and equipment manufacturers would like you to make all your energy decisions, and while this is fine for a renter, and fun to do, it is not the way you should look at things as a building owner. If you own the building, your business purpose is definitely not to figure out how you become a more efficient customer of your local utility or oil company. And if they try to convince you to invest in energy efficiency, let them do it, as long as you realize that they are investing in you as a customer, so their objective is maximizing their profits, not maximizing the value of your property. If they can get you fool enough to actually invest your money in becoming a more efficient customer of theirs, they have the best of all things: a customer retention program, financed by the customer!

As a building owner you should look at maximizing building value in the long term. That requires a vastly different approach, for if you follow the methodology used here, you'll be frittering away your money over time and doing exactly what I described: investing your own money in a (volunteer) customer retention program for your utility.