Written by Pip Harley, CitySwitch Program Manager – City of Sydney for Retrofit Australia Magazine. 

Energy use from lighting can be reduced by up to 82 per cent if efficient practices are adopted. This opportunity is widely understood by facilities managers, property managers and sustainability managers of commercial office buildings. It makes the business case for lighting upgrades a fairly easy sell to the executive team, even for tenancies that have less than three years remaining on their lease.

The challenges in a lighting upgrade only present themselves once a company begins selecting the actual product. Improvements in technology over the last couple of years make complete LED fitouts a cost-effective solution, and an increasing number of businesses in the CitySwitch network are considering this option.

Some early LED adopters were burned by choosing inferior products, generally based on price or poor design, and this has been widely publicised. The full benefit of a lighting upgrade relies on control technology as much as the actual light fitting itself. It’s also important to understand how the space you are trying to illuminate is actually used. Many tenancies can be over-lit, so a lighting audit may spot opportunities to reduce the number of light fittings, or make better use of daylight.

Read the full LED Lighting article published in Retrofit Australia (PDF)

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