A simple cost estimation technique for improving the appearance and security of outdoor lighting installations

Lighting designers and planners should check that their clientʹs budget matches the likely cost of any project. To avoid wasted design time, designers must quickly develop a rough project budget, often before any design is conceived or developed. This paper presents a simple technique for planning preliminary budgets for the equipment, installation, and operating costs of outdoor lighting installations. Coefficients in terms of cost per unit area were developed. These coefficients consider the level of improvement of appearance or sense of security for commercial, industrial, public, and residential lighting installations. They were developed by upgrading and redesigning the lighting for 31 typical outdoor lighting scenes, which produced a total of 108 lighting designs. Each design was evaluated for cost, illuminance, light distribution, color, site coverage, and power density and then rated for appearance and sense of security by an expert panel. Average outdoor lighting installations range from $0.39/ft2 ($4.20/m2) for industrial areas to $0.91/ft2 ($9.80/m2) for public installations. Average annualized cost, including energy, maintenance, and amortized installation range from $0.08/ft2/yr ($0.86/m2/yr) for industrial installations to $0.20/ft2/yr ($2.15/m2/yr) for commercial installations. About half of these costs are for annual energy and maintenance. Further, on a five point scale, with 1 equal to poor and 5 equal to excellent, the annualized cost of a point of improvement ranges from $0.03/ft2/yr/point ($0.32/m2/yr/point) for security improvements in industrial installations to $0.07/ft2/yr/point ($0.75 m2/yr/point) for appearance improvements in commercial installations