5 simple ways to improve your emergency lighting system while reducing costs

Purchase a combination exit sign with emergency lights

Doing so allows you to achieve two goals in one unit. Where do the savings come from?

✱Installation time

Cut installation time in half.

✱Shipping Costs

Lower transportation costs due to lower physical and volumetric weight.

✱Materials

You will need less conduit and wiring.

✱Maintenance

You'll reduce battery replacement costs and simplify required monthly and annual test cycles.

See our line of exit signs with emergency lights.

Install a battery backup pack

in general lighting installations.

Save because you'll be using existing lights, such as fluorescent inserts or LED fixtures, rather than purchasing dedicated luminaires. For this reason, no additional electrical drop is required.

It may involve light-switching considerations because these backup battery packs need to be kept charged and therefore cannot close the circuit that the fixture opens. Your electrician can help you determine if this is an option.

Use a UL listed emergency lighting inverter

This is more complex than other options, but the savings come from the fact that a group of fixtures requires only one battery pack instead of one per fixture and the ability to use standard fixtures. No ballast backup or separate emergency lights are required. This does require you to keep the lighting circuit isolated and maintain maximum load on the circuit at the inverter's 90 minute load rating.

If you use LED lights, you can use a smaller inverter or add more fixtures to each circuit due to the increased efficiency of the lights.

For outdoor units, consider using NiCd batteries with exit signs

NiCd batteries are more resilient than sealed lead-acid batteries and have a larger temperature range rating.

In practice, this means that if you need outdoor fixtures, versions using NiCd batteries are less likely to require the additional expensive battery heaters required by SLA batteries. Note: In the latest designs of emergency lights, fixtures using LEDs as the light source are more commonly used exclusively with NiCd batteries.  

Using LED emergency lights

LED lamps are more efficient, producing more lumens per watt, and therefore require smaller batteries. Smaller batteries reduce the size and weight of the luminaire housing, resulting in lower shipping costs. In addition, LED lamps can be molded in novel ways, resulting in more compact designs and more efficient light patterns. You can see this with our EELC series of LED emergency lights.

Shop our LED emergency lights.

If you're currently looking for ways to improve your emergency lighting system, we'd like to help. Email or call us for a free design consultation and we'll be happy to share the benefits of one emergency egress system strategy with you.