Saving energy easy as changing light bulb

Eight years ago, I accepted a full-time position as a contract maintenance supervisor for the new Cherry Creek Whole Foods Market store. This was Denver’s first Whole Foods Market, and the opportunity to be on board a large, shiny new ship with a talented crew intrigued me.

I had spent 20 years in residential design and construction, and although this was a commercial position, my skills translated well. Responsibilities included: Keeping the heating, ventilation and air-conditioning systems functioning properly, coordinating plumbers, electricians and general contractors when problems developed in the store and working with team leaders on an as-needed basis – basically keeping the store shipshape.

Food as performance art

I was also expected to understand the importance of grocery store lighting, and how it played out in different departments. Seafood, meat, bakery, cheese, salad bar, general grocery isles, end caps, point of purchase displays, floral section and banners made up just the short list. If it was in the store it needed light, and usually lots of it.

As time went on and I earned the trust of management and team leaders, I found that they expected me to be the resident expert not only on how to change a light bulb, but also on the details of each light bulb’s characteristics.

Was the light bulb color balanced enough so that the lamb shank didn’t look green? Was the light bulb too powerful for use on a vegetable display – would it reduce its shelf life? Was the light bulb bright enough to show the dazzling reflection of freshness from the Copper River Salmon that said, “I just swam down the Platte River and into this seafood case three minutes ago from Alaska – buy me”?

In some grocery stores, you feel as if you’ve passed into the clean room of some high-tech assembly plant. The light is so bright it takes a moment for your eyes to adjust.

Whole Foods’ strategy is different – it displays food as performance art. My instructions were to light food as if I was hanging art on a gallery wall. Rather than being blasted by pure white light, customers are drawn to food displays because the lighting enhances the color and character of food. The overall lighting plan is effective and obviously makes commercial sense – Whole Foods is a very successful company.

I soon discovered that this lighting strategy used a tremendous amount of energy and cost a lot of money. I was sure there was a smarter and less expensive way of selling food effectively.

Best and brightest

Part of my job was to justify to management which light bulb supplier had the best prices and service. I interviewed several local companies, and selected Conserve-A-Watt Lighting Inc. because I had worked with them before and their prices were the best. As a bonus, I got an education in lighting.

Compact fluorescent light bulbs, or CFLs, had been gaining in popularity for some time because of their ability to produce as much light as an incandescent bulb with much less energy. However, not every light fixture in the store was appropriate for them. I called Joe Morris, my representative from Conserve-A-Watt, and asked him to put together a proposal identifying all the lights in the store we could convert to CFLs and the cost for the new bulbs. I also asked him for an estimate of how much energy and money this strategy would save.

The results were impressive.

Most of the bulbs slated for replacement were 200-watt incandescent, and the replacement bulbs were 18-watt CFLs. The switch could save the store more than $1,300 every month – $15,600 every year. That savings doesn’t account for reduced maintenance costs because CFLs last at least 10 times longer than incandescent bulbs – or the cost of purchasing the replacement incandescent.

The cost of the new CFLs was $1,800, which meant that in less than two months the bulbs would pay for themselves and the real savings would begin. In addition, CFLs produce far less heat than incandescent bulbs, and cooling consumes a lot of energy in commercial buildings.

Can CFLs save world?

It occurred to me that if a store the size of Whole Foods Market saved this much, what kind of savings would a Sears, American Furniture Warehouse or Wal-Mart find over the course of a year if they made the big change-out? How much energy would such an effort save? What are the environmental consequences of saving that much energy?

In his book, “An Inconvenient Truth,” Al Gore mentions that if each household in America replaced one incandescent bulb with a CFL, it would be equivalent in reduced greenhouse gases to removing one million cars from our country’s highways.

Imagine the affect if we replaced even half the inefficient light bulbs in commercial buildings with CFLs. My own research suggests that if builders and building owners routinely made greener lighting choices, the benefits would range from cleaner air, reduced greenhouse gas emissions, and lower utility bills to fewer new coal-fired power plants.

Not a bad return for changing a few lowly light bulbs!

Jean-Pierre Bressieux is owner of Green Home Base Solutions, which specializes in energy audits and green remodeling for homes and small businesses. You can reach him at 303-587-7102, greenhomebase@mac.com or hbsboulder@aol.com.

This story originally was published in the Boulder Green Building Journal.

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