207.200-4685
29 Vincent Street #1, South Portland, Maine 04106
Efficiently serving commercial clients in southern Maine since 2014.
Retrofit or new construction, upgrading to LED lighting with Spark is fast, easy and affordable.
Call us now at (207) 200-4685 or email us at hello@sparkae.com for a free, no obligation site evaluation, lighting assessment and proposal.
We are Maine’s LED lighting experts, offering commercial LED lighting design, build outs and retrofits. We handle all aspects of the project from start to finish, including removing and recycling your old lamps and ballasts. As Efficiency Maine Qualified Partners, we will help you qualify for any available rebates.
Every Spark LED lighting project includes the following:
LED lighting has been a core offerings since our founding.
A typical Spark LED retrofit project
We’re happy to upgrade any commercial building (including apartment buildings with four or more units) within a 90-minute drive of South Portland, Maine. No job is too small or too big. We’ve helped mom and pop stores and some of the largest warehouse spaces in Maine upgrade to LED lighting. We’d like to help you, too.
Why wait? Call now to start saving!
Just ask for Fred and tell him you’d like a free site evaluation to see how much you’ll save with LED lighting.
207.200-4685
fred@sparkae.com
You can save. We can help.
Smart commercial property owners are installing light emitting diodes (LEDs) for these benefits:
Lighting is a big factor in creating a healthy and pleasant indoor environment. The best source of light is our sun. For new commercial construction, buildings can incorporate passive solar design for effective passive daylighting. This eliminates the need for active lighting when the sun is shining. However, active lighting is still required at night, on heavily overcast days, and in areas of buildings where exterior windows or light pipes cannot be installed.
Most existing commercial structures were not designed for passive daylighting. As a result, the efficiency of active lighting is even more important, because it will be operated both day and night. Fluorescent lighting, which until 2016 was industry standard, wastes about half the power used to operate it, emitting heat instead of light. LEDs avoid this waste, converting electricity to light twice as efficiently as fluorescent lamps, without producing as much waste heat as fluorescent technology does. Upgrading to LED lighting pays for itself in cost savings.
Yes. If you are paying to operate fluorescent lights (e.g. 32 watt four-foot tubes), you are paying twice as much as you should every month on your lighting bill. If you are operating incandescent lighting (e.g. screw-in 60 watt bulbs), you are paying four times as much as you should be.
You can use the money you are currently sending to CMP to pay for a commercial equipment loan instead, invest that money in an LED upgrade, and you’ll come out ahead.
Spark offers a free, no-obligation site evaluation that includes a cash flow analysis.
In short, almost everywhere.
The only locations where it does not make sense to install LED lighting is high heat locations such as under a commercial kitchen hood. Everywhere else (and especially in any refrigerated space), LED lighting will save you time, energy and money.
Virtually all commercial electricians are now installing LED lighting. In fact, if your electrician recommends against LED lighting, we suggest you get a second opinion.
When you hire Spark you get LED lighting experts.
The big difference between Spark Applied Efficiency and other commercial electricians is that we are constantly evaluating the newest technologies and products on the market. We’ve spent years perfecting our approach to LED retrofits.
We provide a free site evaluation that shows you how much you’ll save, how much your project will cost, and how much better your monthly cash flow will be if you finance the project.
Once your project starts, Spark completes most LED retrofit projects within one or two days. You can remain open for business while the upgrade is in process. Our crew will work room by room.
For new construction, LED lighting is faster, easier and safer to install than fluorescent lighting.
It depends on the driver. The LED chips (the part that actually produces the light) are dimmable, but the driver controls the flow of electricity to the LED chips. Some drivers are designed to vary the flow of electricity, and some are not. In general, dimmable drivers are more expensive than non-dimmable drivers.
When you hire Spark, we’ll ensure that you get dimming where you need it, and don’t pay for it where you don’t.
Years ago some LED manufacturers dumped low-cost, low-quality LED light bulbs on the market. Unfortunately, that soured some people’s perception of LED lighting.
Basically, you get what you pay for. However, today even the cheapest LED lighting looks better than fluorescent lighting.
The highest quality LED lighting is now being used in museums, art galleries, theaters and other highly demanding settings where the absolute best quality is necessary.
In 2014 the inventors of the blue LED won the Nobel Prize. This technological breakthrough enables LED lighting to provide superior quality and value compared to all prior lighting technologies.
An LED lighting fixture contains a chipset that converts electricity to light, and a driver that converts line-voltage alternating current to low-voltage direct current. An LED light can be designed to produce virtually any color, from the harshest white light to the softest pastel hue. The intensity of the light can be precisely and instantly controlled.
Since the underlying technology is so robust and flexible, LED manufacturers can decide whether to produce the cheapest possible light or the highest quality. Due to economies of scale, it is now possible to produce LED lighting that is far superior to fluorescent lighting in quality, while also being more affordable.
Whereas LED lighting can be as simple as a few components soldered to a circuit board, fluorescent lighting is inherently more complicated. A fluorescent fixture requires a sealed tube containing mercury, a phosphor coating on the tube to prevent harmful radiation from escaping, and a ballast capable of producing voltage high enough to spark a charge across the mercury vapor but with controlled amperage to prevent the tube from shorting out. Decades ago when fluorescent lighting was first invented, it provided worthwhile efficiency gains over the even older incandescent technology that simply runs current through a wire that gets so hot it glows. But today’s LED technology offers fundamentally better quality and value than both fluorescent and incandescent lighting.
LEDs are solid state devices (chips) that emit light when current flows through them. Drivers regulate the voltage and amperage of electricity flowing through the LED chipsets. The controllability of LED lighting is determined by the driver.
Unlike other lighting technologies such as high intensity discharge lamps, LEDs can be repeatedly and rapidly turned on and off with no degradation in their useful life. This makes them well suited for control with motion and vacancy sensors. Some dimming solutions rapidly turn LEDs on and off to reduce the amount of light energy they emit. When turned on and off rapidly enough, the gaps in light output fall below the rate at which photons excite cells in our retina. So we cannot perceive these gaps, simply register fewer photons reaching our eyes, and the light appears dimmer to us.
When selecting LED lighting, buyers should look for
In particular, when evaluating LED luminaires (lamps and drivers), buyers should consider
For maximum savings, it is best practice to install vacancy sensors, which require lights to be manually turned on, but automatically sense vacancy to turn lights off. In addition, daylight harvesting can save energy by dimming LEDs when ambient light levels are high.
Hire us to save time and money on your next lighting project!
You can save. We can help.
207.200-4685
29 Vincent Street #1, South Portland, Maine 04106
Efficiently serving commercial clients in southern Maine since 2014.
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Coon & Horch, LLC d/b/a Spark Applied Efficiency