GSA SWitching to Energy Efficent Lighting

The General Services Administration is overhauling how it lights federal offices — one cubicle at a time.

By replacing row upon row of fluorescent lights with controllable task lights above each workstation, GSA estimates it can cut lighting-based energy consumption by 40 percent or more.

"It's a simple concept really. We need to put light when and where it is needed," said Kevin Powell, director of research for GSA's Public Buildings Service.

"That's actually not what we've been up to. What we've been doing has been flooding our spaces with tons of light, which ironically puts too much light in places where we don't want it, like on your computer screens."

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The amount of light flooding both federal and commercial office spaces has mushroomed since the advent of the cheap fluorescent tube during World War II, said Kevin Kampschroer, director of GSA's Office of High-Performing Green Buildings.

During his many public speaking engagements, Kampschroer often cites an eye-opening statistic that he attributes to a Harvard University professor. The amount of artificial light in office buildings has increased 400 percent since 1900, even though our eyes haven't gotten 400 percent worse.

GSA has been at the vanguard of installing more energy-efficient lighting systems in its buildings and avoiding electric lights altogether where possible by maximizing the use of natural light from windows or overhead skylights.

Now GSA is taking the effort a step further by moving away from the traditional approach of installing rows of overhead lights in ceilings, regardless of where employees are located, and instead targeting lights to individual workstations.

GSA is using part of the $5.5 billion in Recovery Act funds it received to install lighting systems using this new approach in about 100 existing buildings, Kampschroer said. In addition, GSA has incorporated the lighting design into performance requirements for new buildings.

The potential to save energy through the new lighting installations is high. Lighting accounts for about one-fourth of all electricity consumed in office buildings, according to the Energy Department.

GSA tested the new lighting approach last year on one floor of the Philip Burton Federal Building in San Francisco. Flanks of overhead lights were removed and replaced with 86 lighting systems suspended directly above each cubicle. The lighting systems are composed of three 32-watt florescent tubes: two that emit downward light toward the employee's workstation, and one that projects ambient lighting toward the ceiling.

Occupancy sensors allow the lights to be turned on and off automatically when an employee enters a cubicle or leaves after an extended period of time. In addition, the intensity of the lights can be increased or decreased to suit specific employees' needs. Most employees have opted to use about 60 percent of the maximum power available in the lights, said Mark Levi, energy program manager at GSA's Region 9, headquartered in San Francisco.

Employees who had the new lights installed found the lights more comfortable overall than those who had the older lighting configuration. The cubicle-specific lights were more evenly distributed and provided less glare on computer screens than the traditional overhead lights, employees said.

By studying how often the lights remained on during the workday, GSA discovered that employees occupied their cubicles for only 55 percent of the day on average. Twenty-two of the workstations were occupied for less than three hours on at least half of the 32 days studied.

The lighting system installed at the Burton building capitalizes on those frequent absences by keeping the lights off when employees are away from their desks. The result was a 40 percent reduction in energy consumed by the new lights, compared with the already efficient lighting systems installed in most federal offices, according to a study completed last month by GSA and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

"The simplest way to save energy is in fact to turn the lights off," Powell said.