Don’t wait to retrofit May 23, 2011
Posted by ElectricianDenver in energy savings, lighting.Tags: denver electrician, electrical service, lighting efficiency, lighting rebates, xcel energy, Xcel rebates
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Nobody wants to pay for a lighting retrofit, but it’s necessary in the long run if you want the continued energy savings. Xcel Energy offers rebates to commercial lighting customers in Denver in order to help lower the costs for the small business. Generally, Xcel will pay for around 50% of the entire job, depending how inefficient the original lights are. If you’re in the city and county of Denver, the city will match Xcel’s rebates up to 70% of the total cost of the job, and 80% if you are a nonprofit organization. One of the catches for the rebate program is that you hire a lighting contractor to do the work.
If you have ANY type of HID lighting (High Pressure Sodium, Metal Halide, Mercury Vapor), it is financially in your best interest to retrofit those lights with more efficient lighting. The higher the wattage of the light, the larger the energy savings, and the larger the rebate.
Right now, Xcel has fantastic rebates for customers that change out their canopy lights. This certain campaign is geared towards gas stations. If you replace your canopy lights, Xcel will automatically give you $475 per light that you replace with LED, but they won’t give you more than 70% of the total job cost. What that means is that you basically get a really nice, 100,000 hour light for the price of a cheap light.
Another decent set of rebates that Xcel has is if you change from T12 fluorescent to an energy efficient replacement, they will pay $600 per kilowatt saved versus the standard $400, but they are only doing this during 2011.
Give us a call if you’d like us to come out and tell you how much money you could save!
Xcel Rebates April 25, 2011
Posted by ElectricianDenver in energy savings, lighting.Tags: CFL, compact fluorescent, denver, denver electrician, electronic ballast, induction, LED, lighting rebates, Xcel rebates
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As part of our quality electrical service in Denver, we specialize in lowering people’s Xcel energy power bills by installing energy efficient electronic fluorescent lighting, induction lighting, or qualifying energy star LEDs. Some of the rebates are surprisingly large, and in several cases so far, we were actually able to accomplish several-thousand-dollar retrofits for free or almost free(<$100)–including the labor costs for the electrician. One of the things that sets us apart from our competition is the fact that our electricians are licensed, compared to other companies that don’t even use electricians.
Xcel Lighting Rebates in Denver February 21, 2011
Posted by ElectricianDenver in energy savings, lighting.Tags: CFL, compact fluorescent, denver, denver electrician, electronic ballast, induction, LED, lighting rebates, Xcel rebates
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How do I apply for Xcel lighting rebates?
Here’s a list of lighting retrofits that Xcel will give you money for.
These days, Xcel is giving away a ton of money to companies who are willing to replace or retrofit their inefficient lights with new, electronic lighting that will save a lot of electricity. Some of the new lighting includes electronic fluorescent lighting, induction lighting, and more powerful than ever LED lighting.
The new fluorescent lighting comes in many shapes and forms. CFL, or compact fluorescent lamps are a very easy way to get the rebates and save energy–this is probably the easiest choice, as long as the light that you’re retrofitting has 120 volt power, which is the same power that a regular wall outlet uses. Most of the older fluorescent lights that Xcel is giving rebates for consist of 8 foot and 4 foot T12 fluorescent lights, which are the larger bulbs as opposed to T8–a little smaller, and T5–the next size smaller in diameter. T12 fluorescent lighting uses a magnetic ballast instead of an electronic ballast, which the T8 and T5 lighting uses. Electronic ballasts produce much less heat, contributing to the actual electricity savings, and most times, saves on air conditioning costs as well. My favorite retrofit that has a very short payback period is replacing the high bay metal halide and high pressure sodium (HPS) light fixtures that most warehouses and school gyms have. If you replace a 400 watt HPS or metal halide fixture with a 6 or 8 lamp T8 high bay fluorescent fixture, Xcel will give a rebate of $75 per fixture, and if you live in Aurora or Denver, they will match Xcel’s rebates up to $5,000 if your business is in Denver, and $3,000 if your business is in Aurora. We’ve done a $6,000 retrofit for $26, which did include labor and material.
Induction lighting is a type of lighting that the lamps have no actual metal connections to the fluorescent-looking bulb. The electricity is transferred through the glass wall of the completely sealed bulb using induction technology. Wikipedia has a great article that talks about the benefets of this new technology.
Check us out! We are an Electrician in Denver, and would love to show you some of this great service. www.heselectric.com
