Greetings to All. Would like help in performing some due diligence on a product concept I'm considering and figured it would be a great opportunity to tap the collective wisdom of the Forum -- plus maybe spark some interesting discussion -- on the following question:
What is the current climate among FM professionals for investment in (wireless) networked lighting control; what criteria is most relied upon for evaluating the product (IRR, payback, corporate sustainability, other...) and what channels (company direct, manufacturer's reps, etc.) do you most often see lighting controls being sold through? Follow-on question...to what extent are you actively aggregating the data coming off of their controls programs with higher level EIS like those offered by the biggees (Cisco, SAP, IBM, Oracle, etc.)?
Thanks for any comments you can share!
Robin (cabcolored7@yahoo.com)
Ive bought lighting controls, although not wireless, for several sites as part of several different projects.
Most (80%) were through performance contracting agreements and we used an ESCo to provide the product and do the work.
We've also done some small projects in-house and bought equipment from our local electrical supply house.
We've also use an electrical contractor a few times and I'm sure they bought from the local supply house.
We're looking at the possibility of doing several energy saving projects in the next few months at several sites right now so we're in the middle of the process of making the investment decision. We have dozens of projects to pick from so we've ranked them primarily by NPV and then within that looked for the shortest simple pay back and the lowest first costs.
NPV is the most important criteria but we don't want a lucrative project that won't pay for itself in more than 5 years and we can't do a lucrative project if it costs too much up front. Being able to lease the equipment over the payback period and have the energy savings offset the investment has been a big incentive for us.
We haven't done measurement and verification of saving in the past other than to review energy bills and attempt to adjust them for seasonal differences to see if we're saving what we predicted. Not a very scientific system. We will be doing some more sophisticated M&V in this round but we're not sure what yet. We'll be asking our ESCo to provide third party M&V in their contract and asking for their recommendations.
So this is how one organization is doing it, I'd be interested to hear from others to see if somebody has a better way.
20 years fixing, building, and managing facilitiesPreventive Maintenance