Putting Light Where it Belongs
About an hour and a half northwest of Minneapolis, the 410,000-square-foot DeZURIK manufacturing plant in Sartell, Minnesota is one of the nation's leading manufacturers of high-performance industrial valves. Now, thanks to a retrofit by Premier Lighting using [P2] fixtures, it's using much less energy.
An Atypical Approach
Most of the lighting retrofits we talk about involve a change in lighting technology. Either a switch from metal-halide to [P2]'s fluorescent fixtures, or from fluorescent to our LED fixtures. In contrast, the DeZURIK retrofit kept the same core lighting technology, but delivered significant improvements in both lighting efficiency and quality.
Before Premier Lighting went to work, DeZURIK's 410,000-square-foot building was lit with 2,236 T8 strip lighting fixtures. The typical approach would have been to replace those 2,200+ fixtures with 2,200+ more efficient fixtures. But Premier Lighting knew that the typical approach isn't always the best approach.
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The team at Premier Lighting worked with [P2] and came up with a better plan. Instead of a conventional 1-for-1 retrofit, they'd reduce the number of fixtures in the manufacturing facility by more than two-thirds, and in the process cut DeZURIK's lighting energy costs by over 50%.
This plan relied primarily on replacing the facility's existing strip lighting with [P2]'s HBH fluorescent high bay fixtures. The retrofit used 478 standard, 4-lamp, T8, HBH high bays, along with another 189 HBHs with occupancy sensors added.
Putting Light Where it Belongs
Performing a comprehensive relighting and specification on this scale was a significant amount of work, but the Premier Lighting team were up to the challenge.
The key principle behind the relighting and specification was putting the lighting where it's needed the most. The Premier Lighting team identified the specific tasks being performed in each area of the facility, and designed a lighting layout that would deliver appropriate light levels throughout the plant.
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When Premier Lighting evaluated several different technology options for the project, they found that fluorescent was the clear winner. Using [P2]'s HBH fluorescent high bay fixtures delivered the right balance of efficiency, lumen maintenance, fixture lifespan and installation costs.
The Payoff
Lighting retrofits on the scale of the DeZURIK manufacturing plant can come with significant initial costs. Luckily, Premier Lighting helped DeZURIK take advantage of over $44,000 in rebates from the plant's utility, Xcel Energy.
The retrofit replaced 2,236 existing fixtures with 716 energy-efficient fluorescent high bay fixtures from [P2], eliminating 1,520 fixtures. As a result, the retrofit cut DeZURIK's lighting energy consumption from over one million annual kWh to 545,167 kWh. In terms of energy costs alone, the retrofit will save DeZURIK over $49,000 per year.
The replacement fixtures from [P2] also have significantly longer lifespans than the originals. As a result of those longer lifespans, DeZURIK will save an additional $9,000+ in maintenance costs every year with their new system.
Combining the energy and maintenance savings of the new lighting system, DeZURIK will now save just under $50,000 per year. The new system will have completely paid for itself in 2.18 years, and by year five it will have generated over $160,000 in positive cash flow.
