Lighting usually offers an easy and rewarding way to save energy dollars and should be one of the first places you look for potential energy savings - a 20% to 50% savings is commonplace. Changes are often very easy to make, and a good many of them cost little or nothing to do. For instance, removing just one 100-watt light bulb can save over 200 kWh of electricity every year; removing five such bulbs would save over 1,000 kWh. You would also save the cost of replacing burned out bulbs (an average conventional light bulb used eight hours per business day will last only six months).

Lighting energy dollars are wasted by

• Inefficient Light Sources - When the lamp or fixture is inefficient in converting electricity to light, using more watts than necessary to produce the lumens.
• Transmission Losses - When dirt or some other obstruction blocks some of the light; or when the light source is too far away from what you want illuminated.
• Over Lighting - when more light is used than is needed or when a 'free' source such as daylight is not used.
• Excessive 'On' Hours - when lights are on for no reason (e.g. when no one is the room).