Guide to Select LED Lighting for Multi-Family Housing

The Alliance for Solid-State Illumination Systems and Technologies (ASSIST), a program of the Lighting Research Center (LRC) at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, recently released a new publication to aid owners and facility managers of multi-family affordable and rental housing in selecting LED lighting products.

The publication, The Lighting Field Guide: Upgrading to LEDs for Multi-family Housing, provides a clear, concise guide to selecting LED replacement lighting products for common interior and exterior lighting applications found in multi-family housing. The project was co-funded by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) and ASSIST.

“Energy-efficient lighting can reduce electricity and maintenance costs significantly in multi-family housing, because it decreases energy consumption and lasts longer than traditional lighting,” said Francis J. Murray Jr., President and CEO of NYSERDA. “As part of New York State’s aggressive energy-efficiency policies under Governor Cuomo, NYSERDA is proud to support this project as part of our continuing partnership with the world-renowned LRC.”

Energy efficiency has become an important goal for many multi-family, affordable housing sites. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development spends $5 billion per year on utility costs for public and other affordable housing. Nadarajah Narendran, Ph.D., LRC director of research and organizer of the ASSIST program, said that LED lighting offers the opportunity to control energy use and associated costs, which would provide significant benefit to this segment of the housing market. “However, clear, straightforward information written primarily for building owners and managers has been missing to date,” he said.

The publication discusses the most important issues relevant to selecting LED lighting for multi-family housing, including:

• important metrics and application issues
• product labeling
• best practices for replacing existing incandescent or fluorescent lighting with new LED lamps or fixtures
• savings and payback calculation methods
• potential rebates and incentives to buy down the initial cost, making LED lighting more affordable

The Lighting Field Guide: Upgrading to LEDs for Multi-family Housing is available for free download from the ASSIST website at http://www.lrc.rpi.edu/programs/solidstate/assist/multifamily.asp.