The Smart Lighting Engineering Research Center (ERC) at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) has cooperated with campus officials to fix LED retrofit lamps instead of 119 incandescent bulbs in the 9-story George M. Low Center for Industrial Innovation (CII) building. The Smart Lighting ERC thought it took 12 to 16 months to do the investment in SSL (solid-state lighting).

Smart Lighting ERC noted, each of LED bulbs cost $60, while the incandescent bulbs cost $4.50 only. But using LED alternative instead of 50W incandescent bulbs dissipated only 8W and the LEDs could produces the equivalent light output of 65W incandescent bulbs.

The project’s payback period built on the energy and maintenance savings from LEDs. Usually, the incandescent bulbs needed replace every four months, while the LED replacements were said to last six years. If this true, it could save $5608 every year for the project.

Smart Lighting ERC added, this was the first step. It is possibly to replaced all of the old bulbs in the CII with LEDs and increase more savings, even, expand to all entire campus in the world. Meanwhile, they planed to seek to a new wave of solid-state lighting with applications that would transform the way society uses light.

The Smart Lighting ERC is led by RPI with partners Boston University and the University of New Mexico within funding from the National Science Foundation, industry, and New York State.