The Harvill Lighting Project is a student-led grant authored by the Energy and Climate Committee of Students for Sustainability. With the support of the Campus Sustainability Fund and the Utility Modification Revolving Fund, the project will minimize energy usage, improve lighting quality, and lower maintenance costs by switching outdated lights with new, more efficient LED lights. In addition, this project also incorporates educational outreach strategies concerning energy saving. The Harvill Retrofit Project plans to utilize fliers, social media outreach, and a temporary art project (featured above) to enhance educational outreach on campus.
Spurred by the committee’s research that replacing the lights with LED lights not only results in energy savings but can create a more enjoyable learning environment by reducing eyestrain, they sought the support of Facilities Management to conduct a lighting audit. Facilities Management provided measuring tools and instructional training to the committee members on how to perform a lighting audit. The collected data was then sent to Facilities Management and used to determine which lights needed to be replaced.
Based on the audits, it was found that the building was currently lamped 927 fixtures. This project sought to replace all fixtures with state-of-the-art LED fixtures and LED retrofit kits, resulting in an estimated reduction in electrical energy consumption of 115,155 kWh per year, equal to 1,151,769 kWh over the effective lifecycle of the initiative. This equates to a total abated GHG emissions of 718.1 MTCO2E. The initiative has an estimated effective lifecycle of 10 years, based on 4,380 hours per year of operation and an average estimated lifespan of 43,800 hours. Calculated using campus utility billing rates from the 2023-2024 year, there will be an annual avoidable energy cost of $12,897 per full-year, or a net avoidable cost of $128,988.
This project was partially funded by the Utility Modification Revolving Fund, a program of the University of Arizona that serves as an energy efficiency revolving fund. Because the net cost of materials and contractor labor exceeded the UMRF's normally acceptable payback period, the UMRF funded approximately two-thirds of the project cost, or $64,487. The remainder of the project cost was funded by the Campus Sustainability Fund.
