A Successful Lighting Retrofit

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Want to earn a return of 16-44%/year on your money?  Retrofit your holophane billboard lights to high efficiency LED’s.  Insider has achieved a 37% return on capital and a 44% return on capital by retrofitting billboards to high efficiency lights.

This summer Insider converted 3 two sided billboard structures to high efficiency lights combined with the SmartLink monitoring system.  The electricity savings alone produced a 16% return on capital.   This return on capital was less than the return on Insider’s first two retrofit projects because the signs were smaller (10’5 x 36 faces as opposed to 14 by 48 faces).  Even so, the project meets Insider’s investing hurdle rate and the labor cost savings and reduced credits for outages will increase the return further.  Here are the numbers.

Circle City Outdoor’s manager Duane Fredrickson describes the project.

What was the project?
We had aging and inefficient lighting and controls on a number of our structures. We were experiencing timing clock failures on a regular basis. The old holophane light bulbs were also a problem. It was rare that we had every bulb working on every fixture. The project was to go through the designated sites and upgrade to SmartLink controls and high efficiency LED fixtures.
How did Reliable Electric and Smartlink help?
Both Reliable and SmartLink are great to work with. Brian Kline at Reliable Electric surprised me with how easy he made the process of selecting and ordering the correct LED fixture for the application. Then, to take customer service to a new level, he completed the forms for all the rebates, emailed me all the product spec sheets I needed to apply for rebates.
The guys at SmartLink are a similar positive experience. They went through everything up front and made the process very easy. As we were retro fitting old lights with existing mounting and wiring they made it clear that there we would be a few unknowns. For instance, we needed to alter the existing mounting brackets on one of the structures. The field tech and PJ Pedroni from SmartLink got on the phone and had it figured out in a few minutes.
How long did the install take?
I think they had everything installed, tested, up and running in less than 2 days once the crews got in the area. Then PJ walked me through how to log-on with my phone to see the status of every system on every structure.
What are the benefits of the project.
  1. You will see a big drop in electric bills.  It’s great.
  2. SmartLink alerts you to any power and bulb outages immediately.
  3. You can remotely change timing, turn on and off systems.  SmartLink automatically adjusts light time schedules to Daylight Savings which saves a truck roll.
  4. The financial return you get from installing SmartLink and high efficient lighting is pretty remarkable. But to get the true return you must factor in the cost of continual maintenance on the old system, parts and labor. You also have to factor in the cost of not having an upset advertiser because his board isn’t lighted – again! I think that’s worth as much or more as the straight financial return.
  5. The new lights are brighter and our ads stand out better which provides more value to our clients.
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