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Single Office Savings

How much could you save in just a single private office?
How about 56%!

Take a 12 x 14 foot private office with 12 40-watt fluorescent lamps. They consume 480 watts of electricity (.48 kW) per hour of operation.

Lights are normally on 9 hours a day. Annual consumption would be 1,123 kWh (.48 kW x 9 hours x 5 days x 52 weeks, not including evening cleaning and occasional weekend use). At $0.09/kWh, this would be $101.07 per year.

Let's cut down the bill
Here are three easy steps to reducing your energy use in that office:

1. Remove two pairs of lamps near windows and door. This alone would save 374 kWh each year.
   
2. Turn lights off two hours a day - one hour at lunch and one hour during times when the office is unoccupied. This will save about 22% of the electricity to run the remaining lamps.
   
3. Replace the remaining eight lamps with energy saving lamps which use 15% less electricity.
   

These changes would give you an office with adequate lighting and annual consumption of just 495 kWh (.272 kW x 7 hours x 5 days x 52 weeks).

Your new cost would be about $44.55 per year - a savings of about 56%.

That's for just one office. Apply similar techniques throughout your space or building and you'll see much larger total dollar savings. Investing in premium efficiency 32-Watt T-8 lamps and electronic ballasts (required for T-8s), reflectors and automatic controls can yield still greater savings.

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