Walmart, Dont Forget to Turn the Lights Off

Editor Note: This is a completely theoretical and educational exercise to evaluate the extreme value that building commissioning can provide in energy resources and monetary savings. Walmart is not involved in this study, has not endorsed or evaluated it in any way. All data is calculated at the time of writing this article in mid 2024.

Introduction

At a local Walmart store the other day, despite being in the middle of the day… the lights were on at all the parking overhead lighting. Why is this? It seems likely a mistake. Perhaps it's due to some unknown condition. Maybe a storm reset their automatic timing or what if the latest software update just broke things– something silly like that?

May 21st is when this first photo was taken, and on another visit 2.5 weeks later, it was verified that the issue persisted.

Curiosity Killed the Cat?

This got us thinking… How much is this costing them? How much energy are they wasting?

Surely Walmart… worth over 500 billion US dollars could figure out how to turn on and off their parking lights…?

Building Commissioning

Building commissioning is a topic we’ve briefly covered here, and in the article we write about how it's frequently overlooked – and many times value engineered off the project. We discuss how ignoring this critical step can cost an owner in the long run, and how easy it is for different building issues to add up, both economically and in energy resources.

Typically, this is a topic that is discussed at very high levels. A lot of, ‘you should do this because it's going to cost you’ and is ‘energy wasteful’. Well — what does this really mean?