August 5, 2025
The Case for Replacing 2010s LED Installations
Author: Craig DiLouie, LC, CLCP is education director for the Lighting Controls Association
New tech, better light quality, and fresh rebates make a compelling case
As the market for replacing traditional light sources with LED becomes more challenging, a new market is developing around upgrade of early-generation LED installations. This presents an opportunity to achieve greater energy savings, enhance lighting quality, and integrate advanced lighting controls. Supported by a small number of new commercial lighting rebates that are likely to expand in availability, this trend appears certain to grow.
The demand to upgrade traditional lighting systems with LEDs is shrinking.
The rapid adoption of LED lighting places this technology in the late majority phase. The remaining upgrade market, while substantial, is largely composed of building owners who so far have been resistant to invest in LED technology.
According to the Department of Energy, the installed base of LED products reached a rough parity with traditional light sources in the commercial building sector as early as 2020., A 2024 study by utility consulting firm DNV estimated LED adoption in the linear market reached60 percent.
LED-to-LED upgrades offer a fresh opportunity.
Today’s LED products generally produce better light quality, broader options such as color tuning and luminaire field-adjustability (light output, optics, color temperature), greater controllability, and greater energy savings than their early-generation counterparts. With this type of upgrade, owners can modernize their lighting system with improved energy efficiency, flexibility, and lighting quality, and recover the cost through energy savings and potential energy efficiency program rebates.
Electrical contractors can support customers who are evaluating their lighting system end-of-life and consult on upgrades to replace the lighting system. Electrical distributors can similarly call on existing customers to educate them on replacement options, ranging from high-efficiency TLED lamps to new luminaires. as their systems approach end-of-life.
“Because performance of LED products has significantly increased in the past 10-15 years—including better color rendering and color maintenance, light output, efficacy, optical distribution, thermal design, controllability, and dimmability—an LED-to-LED upgrade is a great opportunity to improve upon early LED product performance,” said Leora Radetsky, Senior Lighting Scientist, DesignLights Consortium (DLC). “These retrofits can offer many energy benefits, but to get the most out of this type of retrofit, using dimmable LED fixtures and added controls is essential, and easier than ever.”
To evaluate potential energy savings, consider the DLC’s technical requirements for solid-state lighting, which establish a baseline performance for solid-state lighting (SSL) products for qualification by many commercial lighting rebate programs. Comparing DLC SSL specification 3.1 (published in 2015) to the current DLC SSL specification 5.1 (published in 2020), efficacy requirements for 4-ft. TLED products increased by 20 percent, 2×4 troffers by 29 percent, and high-bay luminaires by 50 percent.. For earlier products, the savings can be even higher.
Early adopters of LED technology included outdoor, parking garage, downlights, high-bays, and linear lighting, all of which represent favorable applications for LED-to-LED upgrades. Good targets for LED upgrades also include LED products installed prior to circa 2018, which are now approaching end-of-life and may be experiencing LED mortality modes such as high lumen depreciation, color shift, and complete failure.
“We’re at the tail end of the LED adoption curve,” said Randy Young, Director of Marketing and Data Solutions, BriteSwitch. “Most of the early and even the late majority have already made the switch. What’s left are laggards—a much harder sell. Contractors and distributors have an opening, however, if they go back to early adopters with the right story that includes better light quality, stronger energy savings, and available rebates.”
Lighting controls are ideally matched to high-efficiency LED options.
An LED-to-LED upgrade can further benefit from enhanced energy savings by incorporating advanced lighting controls. Ideally, controls are installed during the upgrade, which minimizes the cost of installation labor.
“LED-to-LED upgrades are a great opportunity to add controls that may have been skipped the first time around,” Young said. “Many of the newer LED fixtures have dimming built in or are designed to work with external controls like sensors. That means even more savings and more comfort in the space. Rebates help too—for example, in Connecticut, the rebate for a 2×4 troffer nearly quadruples when installed with luminaire-level lighting controls.”
Control options range from discrete devices such as scene controls and occupancy sensors to luminaire-level controls and networked lighting control systems. These systems can control room(s), buildings, or an entire campus and integrate with other building systems such as HVAC for even greater energy savings.
Ideally, lighting controls will be considered and installed as part of the lighting upgrade. If not, at a minimum, any specified LED products should be controls-ready to future-proof the lighting system by providing the ability to incorporate later.
“LED-to-LED upgrades are a perfect opportunity to include controls,” Radetsky said. “With more and more luminaires being offered as controls-ready— including some with standardized receptacles to easily add on controls, or with integrated sensors and networked lighting controls—it’s easier than ever to provide granular lighting control and greater savings than possible with standalone controls.”
Commercial lighting rebate programs are starting to reward LED-to-LED upgrades.
As a relatively high-volume, low-cost source of energy savings, lighting has traditionally played a lead role in utility lighting incentive programs. As LED saturation increases, rebate program administrators are searching for new sources of energy savings, with LED-to-LED upgrades and advanced lighting controls at the top of the list.
Previously, rebates for LED-to-LED upgrades have been managed through custom rebates and, to a certain extent, midstream (instant rebates realized at the point of sale) rebate programs. In 2025, 27 incentive programs explicitly addressing LED-to-LED upgrades debuted, representing about 6 percent of all programs, according to BriteSwitch.
For example, Avista Utilities (Idaho and Washington) now offers a TLED-to-TLED conversion rebate of $3 per lamp for a 3-4W reduction and a $5 rebate for a 5+W reduction. Puget Sound Energy (Washington) now offers a TLED-to-TLED rebate for a minimum savings of 5W per lamp. And Xcel Energy (Minnesota) offers $3 rebate per TLED, $30 rebate per troffer, and $75 rebate per high-bay luminaire. These rebates are in addition to any available for lighting controls.
Target customers and applications most likely to benefit from an upgrade.
Distributors, contractors, and retrofit experts might start by engaging with their existing customer base. Project can be evaluated by asking the questions below:
Did the facility make the switch to LED before 2018? If so, their LED products may be approaching end-of-life and are very likely degraded.
Are there any issues in the facility indicative of an aging LED system, such as low light levels or inconsistencies in color appearance? If so, the lighting system may be experiencing a failure mode.
What are the operating hours and cost of energy? Long operating hours and high energy rates reward lower wattage lighting with greater energy savings.
What is the existing wattage of the lighting system? Calculating energy savings when replacing older LED products is not as straightforward as replacing legacy lighting systems. Each luminaire type may need to be physically accessed to identify the model number and nominal light output and input watts.
Is there a utility lighting rebate available that can help reduce the project cost? In some cases, this may be a rebate explicitly for LED-to-LED upgrades. In others, it may be a midstream or custom program.
Are there lighting controls installed? If not, lighting controls can be incorporated, which can maximize energy savings and system flexibility while providing another avenue for lighting rebates. Additionally, there may be opportunities to integrate the lighting control and HVAC system, which can generate even greater energy savings.
Has the upgrade expert identified appropriate packages of solutions? The specifier should ideally work with distributors, manufacturers, and their reps to identify products that save energy while improving system flexibility and lighting quality.
The emerging market for LED-to-LED upgrades is likely to grow as older generations of LED lighting degrade and/or fail, providing an opportunity for greater energy savings, improved light quality, and incorporation of lighting controls. This market growth will be supported by and increasing number of utility rebate programs focused specifically on LED-to-LED conversions.
The Lighting Controls Association is a council of the National Electrical Manufacturers Association that provides education about lighting control technology and application, including articles, videos, design awards, news, resources, and Education Express, a free, 24/7 series of online courses covering everything from technology to design to commissioning.
