120 kWh/day for less than $1000

[not benjamindees]

There are over 100 employees in the office where I'm currently working.  There are at least four, 4-ft fluorescent lights over each cubicle.  The employees leave by 7:00 PM every night.  They start arriving at work around 5:00 AM.

The lights are left on nearly every night and every weekend.

The office is fairly average.  If you drove by it, it would look like a large metal building in the country containing a machine shop or something.  I'm willing to bet there are several just like it within 50 miles of each of you.

A handful of X10 light switches and a timer could be installed for less than $1000.  It would pay for itself in electricity savings in less than six months.  It would return at least $2000 a year after that.

That's an investment with a 200% interest rate. At least.

[jonas302]

So how much would it cost to turn the lights off when everybody leaves?

[not benjamindees]

How much would you charge?  Let's assume it's a 15 minute job.

[joestue]

how about rewiring all the lighting on one breaker panel, then jerry rigging a solenoid up to a timer on the disconnect switch.

[richhagen]

Where I work, they did not even bother to wire in switches so that you could turn the lights off!  The building is less than ten years old, five floors and maybe a hundred thousand square feet a floor.  Really annoying because it is so wasteful.  They were looking at ways to save money, and of course I mentioned this item, and the response was that it would cost about $30000 to fix this issue, so it wasn't worth it - I am pretty sure it still would be in the long run.  The breaker box is of course not accessible to anyone but the building's engineers.  Rich

[mikeyny]

plain and simple "YOU CAN'T FIX STUPID"

[BigBreaker]

Sometimes it's a silly safety/security/insurance thing.  There has to be some light all the time.  I'd wire one tube out of the three separately so that it could be on 24/7 and the rest can be turned off.  That's still 75% of the savings and you could be a lot more aggressive about switching off the majority of the lighting.

I used to work at a company where people kept crazy hours sometimes and the office spaces were enormous.  They used motion sensors to turn the lights on and off and they did it by zones.  If you alone in the room and were simply typing at your PC and not grabbing print jobs, etc the lights would go off!

You'd save more power in a typical office by outlawing PC screensavers and mandating hibernation instead.

[Chagrin]

Where I work they have motion sensors on the toilets that flush the moment you move -- so of course they flush the moment you lean forward/stand up to clean up (ahem) business. That then forces you to flush twice.

Similarly, the toilets and urinals all flush whenever the motion sensor hooked to the lights turns off.