The lighting industry has spent the past 15 years converting fluorescent, metal halide, and HID systems to LED. According to Jeff Seifert, Co-founder at SnapCount, that first wave of conversions is now creating the industry’s next major opportunity: LED-to-LED retrofits. Jeff presented his findings at the recent NAILD conference, where distributors and contractors gathered to discuss the future of lighting upgrades. His message was clear: the easy fluorescent conversions may be slowing, but the retrofit market is far from over. “We’re roughly about 72% converted from legacy lighting technologies,” Jeff explained during our interview. “That means fluorescent, metal halide, HID — all of those categories combined. So yes, we’re approaching saturation in traditional retrofit opportunities. But that creates a completely new opportunity in LED-to-LED.” Jeff noted that once the market moves beyond roughly 85% conversion, the remaining customers become increasingly difficult to persuade. “That’s when you’re getting into people who want to be buried with their fluorescent fixtures,” he joked. Still, the larger story is not about the remaining fluorescent holdouts. It is about the millions of square feet already converted to early-generation LED systems that are beginning to age.
THE FIRST WAVE IS AGING Jeff’s presentation divided the LED retrofit movement into multiple “waves,” beginning with the early adoption period from roughly 2010 through 2015.
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Those first-generation LED products often carried rated lives between 35,000 and 75,000 hours. Efficacy levels were far below current products, and controls adoption remained limited. Depending on burn hours and application type, many of those systems are now approaching replacement age. Using data derived from U.S. Department of Energy market characterization reports, combined with industry trend analysis and SnapCount audit data, Jeff estimates that approximately 8.9 billion square feet of lighting installations from that first retrofit wave are now entering the potential re-retrofit cycle. That number includes both retrofit projects and LED-based new construction completed during the same timeframe. “If you installed LED in 2010 in a high-burn environment, that product could have been ripe for replacement by 2017,” Jeff said. “The opportunity window stretches all the way to 2035 depending on burn hours, maintenance practices, and the customer.” The second major retrofit wave — projects completed from approximately 2016 through 2019 — represents an even larger future opportunity. Jeff estimates that wave alone could eventually represent nearly 30 billion square feet of potential retrofit activity. “So yes, there’s still fluorescent and HID out there,” he said. “But there’s also a huge installed base of older LED systems that are going to be ready for upgrading.”
THE DATA IS ALREADY SHOWING THE SHIFT SnapCount’s internal audit data appears to support the trend.