Tag Archives: LEDs

215 Million And Rising:
 Surge In LED Installs
 Is A Growing Threat
 To Utility Industry

Department of Energy, Environment, Forecasts, Utilities, ,

The cumulative number of light emitting diodes (LEDs) installed across the United States has soared during the past two years—topping 215 million at the end of 2014 according to DOE’s latest data. That’s good for the environment (the amount of source energy needed to power the more efficient LEDs is about 143 trillion British thermal units less than the previous status quo) and consumers (savings topped an estimated $1.4 billion annually in 2014)—but not for growth-starved electric utilities. And, this is just the beginning of a transition that poses serious problems for utilities already grappling with long-term slow-growth forecasts.

In its latest assessment of the LED market (Adoption of Light-Emitting Diodes in Common Lighting Applications, which can be found here), DOE notes that “the adoption of LEDs in general illumination applications is just beginning.” Specifically, while the 215 million figure represents a quadrupling of the number of LEDs installed in just two years, it still amounts to just 3 percent of the U.S. market, which is pegged at some seven billion lighting fixtures.

In a blue sky projection, DOE estimates that if all seven billion lights could be replaced overnight with LEDs, the source energy savings would skyrocket to just under 4,900 trillion Btu (roughly 4.9 quads)—saving customers about $49 billion a year. While we won’t get there overnight, that is the direction we are headed, a direction bound to cause a significant amount of concern in utility C-suites nationwide. (For an earlier analysis of the LED threat, please see this story.)

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 Surge In LED Installs
 Is A Growing Threat
 To Utility Industry →

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LEDs Pose Same Threat
 As Solar & Net Metering
 For Utility Ratemaking

Distributed Generation, Environment, Ratemaking, Solar, Utilities, ,

What is the difference between LEDs and residential solar panels? Plenty, clearly, but for a utility executive worried about slow or no load growth they amount to exactly the same thing—trouble.

I have written extensively about the broad utility-led campaign to quash state net metering programs (see these posts here and here). In general, this effort is based on the premise that net metering unfairly benefits residential solar users (by overpaying them for their generation) and shifts costs onto non-solar customers (by forcing companies to charge them for the fixed costs no longer being paid for by the solar customers through their electricity purchases). But that premise is also true of LEDs if you think it through.

This week I decided to replace a bank of six aging incandescent lightbulbs in my home’s master bathroom with new LEDs—something homeowners are doing with increasing frequency around the country. In years past, this would have been a non-event, but with LEDs’ vastly improved efficiency and lengthy lifespan the equation has changed significantly.

I did a little back of the envelope calculating about the switch: The six bulbs I pulled out consumed 260 watts of electricity when turned on (for reasons unclear to me I had five 40W bulbs and one 60W bulb installed in the bathroom), the new ones just 66W total (and they are brighter to boot, but that is another story). So, every time I turn on the bathroom light switch I am saving 194 watts. That’s an admittedly small amount of power, but if you figure the lights are on for three hours daily that adds up to 582 watt-hours per day. That’s still not much, but over the course of a month, these six lights could save me on the order of 17.5 kilowatt-hours (30×582=17,460 watt-hours or 17.46 kwh).

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 As Solar & Net Metering
 For Utility Ratemaking →

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LEDs Pose Big Threat
 For Slow Growing
 Electric Utility Industry

Utilities,

 

It is a small project by almost any objective standard, but the just-completed LED lighting retrofit at NRG Stadium, home to the NFL’s Houston Texans, is big news, underscoring the dramatic changes under way in the commercial/institutional lighting market—changes that threaten to undercut future demand growth in the already slow-growing electric utility sector.

The stadium retrofit, which is scheduled for a national unveiling during the Texans’ Thursday, Oct. 9th home game, the first night game using LED lighting according to NRG, involved replacing the existing lighting system with some 65,000 light emitting diodes. At full power, NRG said, the new lighting array will use 337 kilowatts of electricity—60 percent less than the 842 kilowatts used by the old unit.

And that is why this smallish project is such big news—companies and local and municipal governments around the country are doing exactly the same thing as NRG, they are replacing older, inefficient incandescent lighting with highly efficient and long-lasting LEDs, and along the way they are cutting deeply into future utility electricity sales.

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 For Slow Growing
 Electric Utility Industry →

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