Lighting program design: New opportunities for profits

摘要

The increased activity by State's to adopt codes and standards is creating new challenges for the design and implementation of lighting programs for commercial new construction. The regulatory environment is also requiring that transaction costs are minimized for these programs. Recent work done by the Illuminating Engineers Society for the new ASHRA-E/IES Standard 90.1-1989R provides a new technical basis for the development of component based lighting programs. Component based programs offer advantages over design assistance programs. They include the ease of marketing, higher market penetration rate, and the promotion of specific cost-effective technologies. The proposed approach also overcomes problems with current component based programs including defining the baseline, free ridership, and difficulties in performing impact evaluations. By addressing these problems, lighting programs for new buildings will continue to be one of the most cost-effective new construction programs for most utilities. The basic concept is to combine two activities that are shaping the national energy picture into a program design strategy. The national activities are the Energy Policy Act of 1992 and the development of the next generation of ASHRAE/IES Standard 90.1. The approach uses the prescriptive criteria in Standard 90.1 to develop savings thresholds for program participation. The savings thresholds are then associated with lighting component technologies to determine eligibility criteria for each component. Combining the prescriptive criteria with component savings is the key to the approach.