SAP Saves $80,000 Per Year From LED Ligting Retrofit

SAP recently completed a series of energy retrofit projects including an LED lighting retrofit. GreenTech Media provided an interesting analysis of the energy savings from each type of energy retrofit.The LED lighting retrofit was number two n savings!


By Michael Kanellos

Fluctuating energy prices, new regulations, employee satisfaction and market opportunities are prompting large and small businesses to adopt green technologies.But where do you get the most bang for your buck?

At the Palo Alto campus of SAP, the answer turns out to be videoconferencing. The company, as part of an overall energy retrofit, installed three telepresence systems from Cisco Systems in Palo Alto for a cost of $300,000. The units will save $300,000 in reduced travel costs in the first year alone. Besides that, they boost productivity.

Solid state lighting came in second place. SAP installed 337 LED fixtures from Lunera and connected them through a network from Redwood Systems. Total cost: $434,000. Annual savings: $80,000.“It is the best business case except telepresence,” said Peter Graf, SAP’s chief sustainability officer.

Retrofitting the data center to run on DC power came in fourth place, right behind a $1.2 million solar array, but the best part has yet to come for DC. The retrofit -- which largely revolved around installing a rectifier that can convert high voltage AC power from the grid into high voltage DC to run computers and storage equipment -- cost $128,000 and saves $24,000 a year. (DC rectifiers save power by reducing the number of times power gets converted from AC to DC and vice versa before it powers a server -- we’re huge fans of DC power these days).That’s a 5.3-year payback. Overall, the DC data center reduces power consumption in the data center by 15 to 20 percent, said Branitzky.

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A good practice for businesses looking to reduce energy expenses is to consider an LED lighting retrofit. Lighting retrofits replace lighting with newer technology such as LED linear lighting to save on energy costs and maintenance costs. Many building experts recommend a lighting retrofit as the first step to reducing energy costs. Redbird LED is an Atlanta based manufacturer and designer of Premium LED lights at value price points. For more information please visit their LED Retrofit website or call ( 678) 733-2473



For years, SAP’s software mostly focused on parameters like factory productivity, cost-per-unit, etc. Now, the idea is to highlight building energy consumption, fuel costs and other direct and indirect factors tied to energy and resources. Right now, large companies largely estimate those figures through extrapolation. But in the future, soft drink managers will, ideally, be able to more easily mine data on changes to the water or fuel footprint of a canned soda over different energy pricing scenarios.

Regulations and rising energy costs are prompting large companies to try to better track resources. But price volatility is also a huge concern. In the last decade, commodity pricing has been 40 percent more volatile than it was in the previous decade, Graf noted. The uncertain future surrounding China’s exports of rare earth elements underscores the problem.


To read the full article please visit

http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/the-worlds-best-green-technology/