A lighting audit is the first step in understanding how much energy your facility is wasting — and what a properly designed system could return. It measures the true savings potential by capturing how your space is laid out, how each area is used, and where lighting is underperforming. With accurate data, you can design a system that delivers the right light levels for your operations while maximizing efficiency and eliminating unnecessary energy spend.

What happens during an audit?

A facility lighting audit isn’t a sales pitch — it’s a diagnostic. The goal is to not only understand the state of your existing lighting system, but also how your business is operating and how the space should be lit to best support those activities.

Here’s what to expect when running an audit with our team at PEC:

• Site walkthrough and lighting assessment: PEC will come on site and walk your facility, performing a detailed assessment of the existing lighting technology, control systems, light levels, and usage patterns.
  
• Detailed notes of the facility’s layout and environment: Incorporating the building’s physical dimensions like square footage and ceiling height, as well as potential obstructions like racking, machinery, or dust, are all key data points needed during the design phase. 
• Observe activities happening in the space: To achieve optimal light levels, it’s also important to note how the space is being used. Areas with detailed task work may need higher light levels, while less-active storage areas may see greater benefit from controls. 

The outcome: a comprehensive analysis that evaluates the existing state of your current facility lighting.

Measuring Waste and Cost Saving Opportunities

Facilities with outdated lighting lose thousands each year through energy waste and excessive maintenance spending. Here are key data points we capture to quantify the overall business opportunity:

• Inefficient Technology: Legacy metal halide or fluorescent systems consume more watts per lumen than modern LEDs. Documenting the existing technology allows our team to calculate the overall wattage that can be tied back to energy spending.
• Maintenance Demand: Detailed fixture notes also allow our team to understand time-of-life expectancies and how frequently fixtures need to be serviced. 
• Optics and Grid Design: How light is dispersed throughout the space can be a huge opportunity for efficiency gains. Fixtures that inefficiently disperse light may have led to excessive fixtures being originally installed, adding to energy waste and creating potential “hot spots” of light. 
• Areas to Implement Controls: Antiquated lighting systems also spend too much time lighting areas where nothing is happening. Identifying how controls can be implemented around your operations can both improve the environment and drive energy savings by an additional 30%+. 

The primary goal: accuracy and awareness. Once detailed audit data is captured, PEC lighting designers can then create proposal options that are truly crafted around your facility and business objectives.

Identifying areas that need light level improvements

Your business doesn’t turn on lights to save energy — you do it to run your business. 

Lighting plays a huge role in employee safety, accuracy, productivity, and even morale. Your audit pinpoints where light levels fall below industry standard. This can include:

• Low or uneven light levels in production zones that impact precision work.
• Dim or shadowed warehouse aisles where forklift operators need consistent visibility.
• Outdoor or perimeter lighting gaps that reduce security or affect employee confidence.
• Color rendering mismatches that distort visibility in quality control or assembly tasks.

You’ll walk away knowing not just where light levels are deficient — but how that translates to real operational risk.

Determining impact and ROI potential from a lighting upgrade

Numbers tell the story. Once data is collected, we model how an upgrade would perform across several dimensions:

• Energy reduction: How much energy (and cost) can be saved annually — often 50–70%+.
• Maintenance savings: Fewer failures, fewer replacements, and less downtime.
• Light level impact: Clear data and visuals of where light level improvements are needed most. 
• Sustainability metrics: How energy savings tie back to carbon reductions that support corporate sustainability efforts.

Every recommendation includes:

• ROI projections and simple payback periods
• Utility incentive estimates
• Long-term total cost of ownership forecasts

The result? A grounded business case, built on your facility’s data — not a generic sales deck.

Book an Audit with PEC

Pacific Energy Concepts (PEC) has completed over 8,000 LED lighting projects across North America — from single sites to large scale multi-site rollouts.

And each project starts with a thorough, on-site audit of your facility, operations, and lighting system.

Get in touch with our team today to discuss your project, see how we work, and schedule a no-charge audit of your facility.