Save Big with LED High Bay Lighting – LaaS (Lighting As a Service)

Look up at your ceiling and what do you see? Maybe you are failing to see a very simple and practically risk free investment opportunity available to owners or operators of commercial, industrial, aerospace, warehouse and manufacturing facilities; and this investment requires NO UP-FRONT CASH. This is what you should be seeing up there in your ceiling. Sounds strange or perhaps too good to be true? This investment opportunity is real and here is how it works.

There are many excuses why you haven’t upgraded your current lighting systems to LED technology. It could be that you are a tenant and not the owner, and you don’t want to spend your money upgrading the building’s lighting for the owner. It might be that you are the owner and the tenant pays the energy bills, so there is no desire to incur the cost of an energy efficient lighting system even though it adds value to your building. Or, your company just doesn’t want to budget the funds needed to upgrade the high bay lamps, fixtures or fluorescents in your building as the funds are needed for other purposes.

But in today’s world you can convert your lighting to a new LED system without any up-front cash payment. You simply contact a qualified LED company with an affiliated subscription funder, and ask for a facility’s survey to upgrade your lighting system. After either a phone or an on-site survey is conducted, an analysis of your current system and suggested new energy efficient system will be provided. You will also see the projected energy savings based on your current system, the prevailing utility rates, and the proposed new LED lighting system. The cost of the new LED system will also be shown, but you don’t write a check for it up-front.

If you think of this arrangement as basically “leasing” your ceiling lighting system to the “lighting as a service” (LaaS) LED company, you will get the hang of how this investment opportunity works. The cost of funding the LED lighting system is paid for by the funding company. You do not pay one cent up-front. You agree to pay for the system on a monthly basis, usually over a three to five-year term depending on the type of retrofit. The new system generally will save 50% or more off your current lighting related utility bill.

The 50% savings is real cash that you no longer pay to your utility company. Instead, you “split” this savings with the LaaS company, paying one half monthly to it for the cost of the new lighting system and keeping the other half of the savings for your company; a win-win situation if ever there was one. Instantly you receive a better quality of light and a state of the art LED lighting system that cost you $0 up-front cash. You share the energy savings with the LaaS company for a period of time, and then for the remainder of the useful life of your new system, the savings is all yours.

The Harvard Business Review, June 2017, in an article about this opportunity noted “The LaaS model is a game changer in the way it aligns and incentivizes both service providers and customers to deploy the most energy-efficient lighting systems available…”. Zero up-front cash, turnkey installation, a new energy efficient and better quality of light system, and you also receive a monthly “lease” payment in the form of the reduced monthly utility bill. This monthly savings is your return/reward for “leasing” your ceiling and lighting system.

Facility owners, operators and managers are becoming more aware of this way to upgrade their lighting systems, and the smart ones are pulling the trigger on LaaS opportunities in large numbers. While others are focused on their core business operations, the smart ones see the opportunity to convert inefficient high bay or fluorescent lamps and fixtures into high tech LED high bay fixtures and LED lamps, and at the same time they are adding money to their bottom line by saving energy. The MIT Sloan Management Review, May 2016, found that “…high-sustainability companies significantly outperformed other companies in terms of stock market performance and other financial performance measures”. So, it is no longer a keep your nose to the grind stone world. You need to look up every now and again to see the big picture. And when you look up at your ceiling of your facility, ponder what it would be like to “lease” out your old lighting system and get a state of the art LED high bay fixture or LED lamp system that replaces the old system you are looking at—and getting paid for doing so. It really is a brave new world.