Greening Austin Daily

Spotlight on Local Businesses: National Instruments Part 1

4th March, 2010 - Posted by katherine - 1 Comment

Carsi and I would like to spotlight local businesses that are making changes to be more environmentally friendly, so today we will have our first of two posts on National Instruments (NI).

My husband works for NI and he noticed that the company began replacing all of the light bulbs in its parking garages with compact florescent lights (CFLs).  I asked NI for more details about this project, and they gave the following information about how the cost/benefits played out for the company in switching out the bulbs for its 2 parking garages:

Bldg B Garage – had 200 100w Metal Halide fixtures. Replacing those with 42w CFLs is projected to save 68,328 Kwh/yr.

Bldg C  Garage  - had 500 100w Metal Halide fixtures. Replacing those with 42w CFLs is projected to save 204,984 Kwh/yr (certain fixtures in this parking garage have more run-time).

So totaling the 2 garages, that’s 273,342 Kwh saved yearly. I couldn’t find how much electricity the average Austinite uses a month, but according to a couple of sources I found, the average American house uses about 1,000 Kwh a month (see this link claiming 936 Kwh a month and this link claiming 907 Kwh a month – I’m guessing the average Austin house probably uses more electricity than the typical American house), so NI is saving enough electricity to power about 22 houses just by changing the light bulbs.

If the cost of electricity is estimated at about  $ .075 per Kwh, NI projects to save about $20,500 a year. The cost of bulbs and the labor to install the CFLs was $41,675.  Through incentives and rebates, NI ended up with out-of-pocket costs of about $17,375.   With the expected energy savings, this means that NI will “break even” from its investment in about 9 months – a pretty good deal for NI and a good deal for the environment.