Operating a business is never cheap. Often times you’ll need to make many sacrifices to ensure the “boat stays afloat.” There are many small changes to be made to save on money, but one of the largest methods of penny-pinching today has actually gained a lot of momentum. You may have seen some businesses utilizing some high-tech equipment to power their outdoor lighting. Purchasing a set of solar street lights is a fantastic method of saving money while protecting the environment. Why? Stick around for this 6 minute read and we’ll gladly spill the beans.
How Solar Lighting for Businesses Saves Money
More Than Just Energy Bills
Outdoor lighting, as mundane as it can be, is extremely expensive–a typical parking lot light can run about 3 thousand dollars just for the light itself. It’s safe to assume that a 10-light system can run about 30 thousand. But there are some hidden prices when it comes to traditional outdoor lighting, and that is often tacked on with trenching.
Take that 30 thousand-dollar projects and literally double the cost when you add trenching (and that’s a conservative estimate). That doesn’t include permits or other factors you’ll need to consider before you dig to install lighting. That massive add-on to the bill is just to place and power the lights.
The beauty of solar lighting for a business is that each light has its own power source–the sun–and you don’t need to dig in order to access it. So that extra 30 thousand-dollar bills for trenching? Wave that goodbye. You won’t need to trench to power solar lighting.
Admittedly, you’ll pay more up-front with solar lighting than you do with traditional lighting because of the costs involved with photovoltaics–a fancy word to describe solar panels–but the price of PVs has dropped astronomically in the past decades by about 99%.
So even though you’ll pay on average about 34 thousand dollars for a 10-light solar lighting system, you’re still looking at a savings of 28 thousand dollars. It’s all detailed in our infographic below:
Did you notice anything about the graphic above? It lists something else you save on.
Okay, Energy Bills Also
For the entire life of a solar lighting system, you’ll never once have to pay for an energy bill. That’s right, you can grab savings upfront from skipping trenching bills and you save money over time.
Energy isn’t inexpensive, and it’s important to reduce energy costs wherever you can to keep sustainability. Thankfully, you can skip paying energy bills with solar too.
Each of the monocrystalline silicon solar panels from solar lighting draws enough energy from the sun in one day to sustain the LED lights for about a week without recurring sunlight. Instead of pulling costly energy from the power grid, the energy is free.
With the assumed cost of .17 cents per kW/H (using fossil fuel energy), added up over the course of 5 years, you can save an extra four thousand dollars. So add that on to your total cost of ownership for your solar lighting, and you can definitely see why solar wins out over traditional lighting running on fossil fuels.
Taxes-We Promise it’s a Good Thing
There’s actually a solar tax credit in place! The Incentive Tax Credit (ITC) gives a very generous percentage back of the total costs of a solar lighting system. The percentage diminishes every year (bottoming at 10% in 2022), so the earlier you can secure solar, the better.
So with that gigantic savings lump sum you’ll save from trenching, and the savings from zero energy bills over the course of 5 years, you’ll save more money–for 2020, it’s 26% of the cost of the system.
So with the costs listed above in the infographic, 26% totals to 8,840 dollars.
So, with saving:
- 28 thousand from trenching,
- 4 thousand from energy savings, and
- Over 8 thousand from the solar tax credit,
You’re looking at an initial savings of 40 thousand dollars.
We won’t tell you how to spend that money. Just invite us if you decide to throw a party.
Save Green While Going Green
The energy crisis grows closer every day, so it’s important to slow down our consumption of fossil fuels. Public lighting accounts for about 7% of energy consumption globally.
Admittedly, a handful of solar lights have a minimal positive impact on global warming, but as green energy initiatives grow, we’ll see a bigger impact. For now, we can cling to small changes that will make profound results in the years to come. Who knows, maybe your business will see a massive publicity boost for switching to solar lighting. Thanks for reading.
Greenshine New Energy specializes in developing and manufacturing customized solar outdoor LED lighting systems for a wide range of lighting applications. We provide cost effective, industry leading and proprietary solar lighting solutions for commercial, residential, and industrial projects. Our solar LED light systems are installed at over 5000 locations all around the world.
Leave a Reply
Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked (required)