IAEEL newsletter 1/93

Efficient Lighting Shines on Pakistan

The global trend towards more energy-efficient lighting is spreading to Pakistan. Audits of existing buildings have highlighted the very inefficient types of lighting equipment and design practices in use today and have identified a sizable savings potential.

Pakistan's National Energy Conservation Centre, ENERCON, has found that lighting offers a major avenue of opportunity for improving energy efficiency in the country. ENERCON's efforts to-date have been supported by a grant from ESMAP (the Energy Sector Management Assistance Program), a joint UNDP/World Bank effort to provide technical assistance and training to energy sector agencies in developing countries. A priority area for ESMAP assistance is energy efficiency. Using the World Bank's "Action Planning Workshop Format" for brainstorming and strategic planning, ENERCON prepared a 5-year Energy-Efficiency Improvement Program proposal and presented it to a group of 25 prospective clients and stakeholders in Pakistan. ENERCON is now preparing a business plan and obtaining funding to implement the program.

The planned program is viewed as a pilot commercialization effort. ENERCON ultimately hopes to see the whole lighting efficiency movement taken over by the private sector. Towards this end, their goal within 5 years is to train auditors and demonstrate the commercial viability of efficient lighting technologies and practices and to show that there are new business opportunities for importers, local producers, auditors, and lighting designers.

GOALS AND FINDINGS
Another important ENERCON activity is to help importers remove barriers contributing to the high costs of doing business in Pakistan. The first success has already been achieved, wherein the government has agreed to lower the import duties on energy-efficient products from 100% to 20%.

The program's 5-year goal is to retrofit about 10% of Pakistan's total commercial building stock (roughly 300-500 buildings). Industrial buildings and highway lighting will also be targeted.

As a first step towards implementation, ENERCON has conducted lighting audits in commercial buildings and evaluated the market potential (total number of buildings potentially retrofitted), types of technologies (fixtures lamps, controls) currently used, and lighting intensitites. Among their findings:

There has been an almost complete shift from incandescent lamps to CRI 54, 40 W fluorescent lamps.
Efficient T8 (26 mm) fluorescent tubes are not currently available.
CFLs are availble, but all are imported (mostly from Europe, but also from the Far East and China). Only about 4 000 CFLs are sold annually in Pakistan.
Ballasts typically used have 15- to 17-watt losses. This translates into 55 watts of total power per lamp, since 2- and 3-lamp ballasts are not used.
Electronic ballasts would be required to cope with voltage fluctuations in the grid from the nominal 220V (plus or minus10%).
Advanced lighting controls are nonexistent.
Fixtures currently installed in buildings are very inefficient. The optical efficiency of existing lensed fixtures can be increased by up to 30%.

Based on the audit results, ENERCOM concluded that there is a national cost-effective lighting energy savings potential well in excess of 50%. This was illustrated through a lighting audit of the headquarters of a leading insurance company. Potential annual energy reductions of 63% from the existing system were identified by using efficient fixtures with T-8, 36-W triphosphor lamps along with instant-start ballasts. This would result in a lighting power density of 6 watts/m^2, and light output would be doubled to 330 lux. By retrofitting 1 258 luminaires throughout the building 235 000 kWh of annual electricity savings could be achieved.

There is also a great daylighting resource in Pakistan, but it is poorly utilized. Instead, architectural professions have a tradition of using tinted glass (rather than selectively coated glazings that allow light, but not heat, to enter the building). This practice has the undesirable effect of increasing the demand for electric light.

Evan Mills

For more information, contact:

Gul Najam Jamy
The National Energy Conservation Centre, ENERCON
ATS Centre, Fazal-e-Haq Road Blue Area
Islamabad, Pakistan
Tel: +92 51 82 62 12

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