Commercial LED lighting upgrades and your EPC

Why lighting moves the rating at all

A non-domestic EPC is an asset rating of the building and its services, not of your metered use. That distinction catches people out, because it means switching the lights off at night does nothing to your certificate even though it cuts your bill. What the assessment looks at is the installed lighting: the lamp type, the power it draws for the area it lights, and whether there are controls on it.

Replace the installed fixtures and you change an input the model actually reads. That is why lighting punches above its weight here. A measure can save you real money and still not move your rating, and the reverse is true too, which is why a contractor who only ever talks about your bill is answering a different question from the one your lease is asking.

What a lighting upgrade actually involves

There are three different jobs that all get called a lighting upgrade, and they cost very different amounts.

• Lamp replacement, where LED tubes go into the existing fittings. Cheapest, fastest, and the weakest result, because the old fitting was designed to spread light from a tube that behaved differently.
• Fixture replacement, where the whole fitting is changed. More expensive, much better light, and the only version that reliably gets you the full improvement.
• Fixture replacement with controls, where sensing and zoning go in at the same time. Covered separately, because the decision about controls is its own decision and is usually the better buy.

When lighting is not the answer

If your building is already on LED throughout, lighting has nothing left to give and anyone telling you otherwise is selling you fixtures. The same is true if the gap between your current rating and the one you need is large: lighting alone will not bridge several bands in a building with poor heating plant and single glazing.

In both cases the useful next step is an assessment that tells you where the headroom actually is. We would rather tell you that than take the enquiry.