For owners and managers of multi-family housing facilities, there is a new guide to selecting and installing replacement LED lighting products for both interior and exterior spaces. The Alliance for Solid-State Illumination Systems and Technologies (ASSIST), a program of the Lighting Research Center at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, recently released The Lighting Field Guide: Upgrading to LEDs for Multi-family Housing.
Along with the guide, which is co-funded by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority, and provides detailed advice for upgrading a building's lighting systems, the LRC and NYSERDA have introduced a new interactive website that can help contractors and builder find the best lighting solutions for their buildings.
New York makes lighting efficiency part of its environmental policy
The state of New York is in the process of approving and implementing numerous projects to help improve environmental efficiency. With this new guide, making the lighting upgrades necessary to not only meet that challenge, but to reach new federal lighting standards has been made much simpler.
"Energy-efficient lighting can reduce electricity and maintenance costs significantly in multi-family housing, because it decreases energy consumption and lasts longer than traditional lighting," said Francis Murray Jr., president and CEO of NYSERDA. "As part of New York State's aggressive energy-efficiency policies under Governor [Andrew] Cuomo, NYSERDA is proud to support this project as part of our continuing partnership with the world-renowned LRC."
By working with the LRC, New York has helped to eliminate some of the confusion that property owners and managers often encounter when trying to make their buildings more efficient. The guide discusses issues like product labeling, best practices for replacing existing incandescent or fluorescent lighting with new LED fixtures and savings and payback measures.
As LRC Director of Research, and organizer of the ASSIST program, Nadarajah Narendran points out, "clear, straightforward information written primarily for building owners and managers has been missing to date." With this guide, that gap has begun to be filled.
Lighting solutions for houses, apartments and rooms
The LRC and NYSERDA have also worked together to build the interactive website, Lighting Patterns for Homes. The website offers lighting solutions for contractors and builders, and its 3-D modeling software allows them to see how various options will actually look once they're installed.
Offering different styles, benefit comparison (including LED lighting systems), an economic calculator and pollution reduction estimates, the website provides yet another tool to aid people in finding energy saving solutions for their properties, whether they own, rent or manage.
