So maybe you'll consider a new technology if it saves 20%? Good start.

What might stop that process and cause a move to old technology? The evil payback analysis. Hey look, I spend money, I get how it works. There is a reason I don't have PV covering my whole roof ... yet!

I am no pricing genius, but here is what I recall from a year ago ... before we had EISA driving the demand/cost curve: moving from probe-start 400W to pulse-start 320W in a architectural cast shoebox cost about $40. You save 90W. At $0.07/kWh, that is $27.60 in savings. You have a 17 month payback.

I don't know about you, but if I could get 17 month payback on a PV array, I might have my yard covered in panels.

It seems obvious, but as I continually discuss this with society, it seems missed; you have to massively decrease demand, and then you can go look for the panacea that removes us from fossil fuel dependence.

What makes us sustainable is reducing energy use. Buy a control system, buy an occupancy/vacancy sensor, just turn off the lights. Maybe the right answer is to retrofit instead of renovate? All that stuff you tear out has to go somewhere ...

Why is it that we need the Federal government to outlaw a lamp (via EISA) in order to get the lighting world to move to that technology?

Pulse-start has been common for at least a decade. Venture has produced a 320W lamp for about that long. This lamp has the same maintained lumens as a 400W probe-start and it is 368 ballast Watts and not the 458W of the probe-start ballast. That is 20% less energy and 20% less power bill.These things do operate for 12 hours per day on average over the year.

Shouldn't it be clear that pulse-start should be used de facto? Shouldn't we as an industry have driven the probe-start lamp out of existence? Yes on two counts. The $64 question is why did this not happen with logic instead of legislation?

Answer? The incorrect assumption that lowest installed cost is the most important. Sure it is important, but only if "sustainable" is something you say and not that you do. Do you buy anything that is recyclable or recycled? What is your payback on that? Before you spend a lot of time thinking about it, it is exactly zero. In fact, you probably pay more for recycled content anything.

If you go with the 320W lamp, you save 400 kWh a year. Sure that is $20-30, but there is a payback.

Now, what if you weren't blessed with $0.07/kWh in Western NC? ... I'll get to that in the next blog.

Labels: green, lamps, pulse start, sustainable