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Lighting & Productivity Productivity VS.Energy Savings Renovating an existing lighting system may reduce the building's connected power load and ongoing energy costs, but improper solutions may harm productivity and satisfaction with interior spaces, negating the cost savings. The National Electrical Manufacturers Association and the Lighting Research Institute produced a report in 1989 that concluded that building owners and managers were making "seriously erroneous decisions" concerning their lighting systems. The report cited putting emphasis on reducing lighting energy costs without sufficient concern for productivity. The proper approach is encapsulated in the EPA Green Lights Program, which states that the goal of a retrofit or redesign is to reduce energy costs while maintaining or improving lighting quality. Earlier in this article, we stated that the cost of employing people in a typical commercial building outnumbers the cost of operating a lighting system by some 150 to one. Therefore, if we redesign the system to generate a 50 percent savings in lighting energy costs, we benefit the bottom line, but if the new lighting solution poorly addresses the goals of the space, which are related to task performance, then the cost of lost productivity and opportunity can negate and easily exceed the cost savings. With this knowledge, our primary goal should be to improve worker productivity, funding the endeavor with energy savings whenever possible to justify the upgrade to senior management, which may view productivity gains as a soft payback because it is difficult to verify. Several leading corporations, among others, have embraced this thinking and reaped the benefits in their lighting upgrades: Lockheed saved $500,000 per year in energy costs during a lighting upgrade in an engineering and development facility. The upgrade, however, also resulted in a 15 percent increase in productivity and a 15 percent decrease in absenteeism, as reported in Solar Today, May/June 1995. West Bend Mutual Insurance reduced energy costs by 40 percent with a lighting upgrade, while increasing productivity in the claims processing department by 16 percent, as reported by the National Lighting Bureau. Wal-Mart's Eco-Mart store saw sales become "significantly higher" on the half of the store lighted by skylights versus the half lighted by electric lighting, as reported in The Wall Street Journal, November 20, 1995. In 1986, the main
U.S. post office in Reno, Nevada was upgraded, with a causal relationship
demonstrated to subsequent productivity gains by mail sorters and operators
of mechanized sorting machines, according to the Rocky Mountain Institute.
Mail sorters became the most productive in the western region of the United
States (from Colorado to Hawaii), while operators of the post office's
mechanized sorting machines gained the lowest error rate. While the energy
and maintenance savings amounted to about $50,000 per year, the productivity
gains were anticipated to generate between $400,000 and $500,000 per year. |
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Above:
The Heschong Mahone Group has pioneered the way in research into lighting
and productivity in schools, offices and retail. |
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