Purse Strings
I was talking to the maintenance manager of a company recently who told me this story.

The company has a very large warehouse used for storage. Warehouse has approx 400 large lamps. The light fittings are about 20 years old. The lamps cost £X and last about a year. The lamps are inefficient and cost £Y a year to run.

If they invested £300k, they could have all the lights replaced with modern, energy efficient ones. And from his calculations, would save approx £200k on their annual electricity bill, therefore pay for themselves in 18 months.

He took these quotes/findings to his superiors 2 years ago. The lights have not been replaced.

Madness.
(Frample Tromwibbler climbs an obstacle like old people fuck, Fri 24 Feb 2012, 19:27, 3 replies)

"Not invented here!
We didn't think of it. Back in your box." Lunacy.

More to the point, it would remove the need for the people that ignored him to keep issuing reports on energy inefficiency. Even when something is to be done, it gets bloated out of recognition: a colleague of mine has spent months on a re-lighting proposal for a massive warehouse near Daventry that would yield similar savings, but now the client's got all the working-out, they're putting it out to tender, when they know what it will cost.
(Good old boy just like yer grandma!, Sat 25 Feb 2012, 22:27, closed)

have you seen these modern, energy efficient lights though?
At ferrybridge we're replacing a lot of the street lighting with LED lighting, that supposedly gives out the same quantity of light as sodium lamps for approximately a quarter of the power consumption. All that has really happened is that the station is like a black hole at night. Also these "guaranteed for 10 years" fittings seem to stop functioning after about 6 months, but that's probably where they get their power consumption figures from.
Sodium and metal halide lamps ftw!
( parttimedogfish is a Born-Again Reincarnationist, Wed 29 Feb 2012, 12:14, closed)

It can seem like madness
but if there isn't enough in your budget to spend £300,000 on new lights this year, the fact that it will have paid for itself in two years doesn't matter.
(richardm, Wed 29 Feb 2012, 15:21, closed)