Industrial, Commercial and Street Lighting Saving & Incentive Tips
Having spent time on both sides of the fence throughout my career, I’ve learned some valuable lessons worth sharing:
A cash incentive needs to be pre-approved before ordering material or you take the chance of losing it. Call before you start!
A rebate is after purchase cash, but you need to confirm it is a program offered by your service provider first. Don’t take the risk and call before ordering.
Retrofit/replacement. Used for existing operations when upgrading to more efficient technologies.
Major renovation: A new build out in an existing building being repurposed as a indoor grow operation. An example could be an existing warehouse being used as a new operation. This type of operation will need a virtual existing legacy system design to calculate energy savings and incentives, which we can do for you!
New: Ground up constriction. This type of operation will need a virtual existing legacy system design to calculate energy savings and incentives, which we can do for you
Utilities may have different incentive structures for the type of operations you have
Electric service: Lighting is typically the largest electric load in a grow operation. Legacy HID systems can use up to 68 watts per SF! This is 68 times the amount of lighting load allowed in a manufacturing plant per code. Grow operations require a large electric service so using efficient technologies dramatically reduce the material cost for the main electrical service that is often left out of the cost analysis.
If you are looking at an existing building to renovate make sure you have the service/amperage available. Three phase is ideal but some rural areas may not have it
Site selection involves many aspects and can determine business success:
Local incentives to buy down upfront costs can be substantial.
Real estate costs, location in relation with market demand, population and legalization of recreational cannabis.
License costs and annual fees can be high with some large cities requiring a license in addition to state license.
Construction codes can hide unknown costs based on local jurisdiction requirements
LED is now an excellent option for all growth cycles from clone to flower and has a positive return on investment over legacy HID and fluorescent systems.
It’s not just about using LED vs. HID. There are many other adjustments that need to be considered when changing out the lighting source that can impact cooling, heating, humidity, spectrum, air quality and more
Choosing an LED product can be challenging. The Design Lights Consortium has a qualified products list to refer to. As a grower, you will know that a product on this list meet the specifications and were third party tested. Not all utility programs require DLC listed products, however. designlights.org