Calculating the Total Life Cycle Costs of Lighting Systems

The Visual Economic Tool can be used to determine the most economically viable design solution for both new installations and retrofits. Economic analysis is used to weigh the potential monetary values of lighting systems that provide the same quality of light.
Courtesy of Acuity Brands

Acuity Brands has developed a leap-forward financial tool that allows users to determine the true economic value of a lighting system, greatly exceeding the simple data output found on many industry payback calculators.

This could be used by landscape contractors and lighting installers to show customers what to expect for future electricity costs and gives ecomomic analysis to properly evaluate multiple lighting systems.

The Visual Economic Tool™ is a free, web-based, user-friendly design tool that uses recommended industry practices to simultaneously estimate and compare the life-cycle costs of up to three lighting systems.

The resulting calculated costs can include economic return as well as life-cycle costs, net present value and internal rate of return. These second-level analysis methods provide an owner with a better business assessment than the typical payback methods. That's because they account for the time value of money and total cost of ownership.