U.S. Foodservice Lighting Project Yields Energy Savings, Boosts Light Levels 30%

U.S. Foodservice plans to install LED technology and intelligent occupancy sensors from Orion Energy Systems in freezers at five of its facilities, reports Reliable Plant. These products are expected to decrease the amount of electricity the food-service distributor uses in its freezers by 1.5 million kilowatt-hours a year, while increasing light levels by 30 percent.

The company will replace 400-watt high intensity discharge (HID) fixtures with 150-watt Orion LED fixtures at five facilities located in Little Rock, Ark.; Oklahoma City, Okla.; Boca Raton, Fla.; Norwich, Conn.; and Zebulon, N.C. The number of new fixtures installed will be 15 percent less than what is currently installed.

Designed for freezer applications, Orion’s I-Frame configuration, reflector design, and adjustable optical lens have proven their performance in field tests, including a test at U.S. Foodservice’s Norwich facility.

In a freezer application, Orion’s LED technology turns from completely off to full brightness instantly compared to traditional HID lighting, which can take up to 20 minutes, says Orion. Because of the LED lamp’s ability to operate at extremely low temperatures, the fixture doesn’t require an enclosure, resulting in more efficient light output. In a freezer application, the life of Orion’s LED fixture will exceed 100,000 hours.

U.S. Foodservice began deploying Orion technology in 2009. To date, the company has reduced its energy consumption for lighting by 30 million kilowatt-hours and saved $3.3 million per year. This translates into a reduction of 19,076 tons of greenhouse gases annually including carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and mercury.

U.S. Foodservice has incorporated a number of other energy-saving features into its building retrofits and new construction over the past year.

In other lighting news, Innovative Lighting and Allstar Electrical Systems promise to significantly cut warehouse lighting bills with LED technology and fluorescent lighting.

Innovative Lighting, which supplies energy-efficient EcoBrite LED lights, says these lights can reduce lighting bills in warehouses by up to 90 percent, while providing more usable light, reports DesmoinesRegistor.com.

As an example, an EcoBrite lighting retrofit at a former Maytag warehouse, managed by Jacobson Cos., expects to yield an annual savings of more than $30,000 to light the 250,000-sq.ft. facility. The property management company expects a three-year payback on the cost of removing the old lights and installing LEDs with motion sensors, according to the article.

Innovative Lighting also installs LEDs for refrigerator display cases. For example, a retrofit project for 151 Kum & Go stores in Iowa is expected to reduce the retail chain’s power bill for case lighting by 70 percent once the project is completed, reports DesmoinesRegister.com.

Similarly, Denver electrical contractor Allstar Electrical Services says commercial and industrial property owners can save 50 percent on utility bills by replacing traditional halogen or high intensity discharge (HID) lighting systems with high bay fluorescent lighting in warehouses, distribution centers, factories, parking structures and even some retail operations.

Allstar says these warehouse lighting systems also save on building cooling costs and qualify for utility company rebates, which reduce up-front costs. These savings pay for the new high bay fluorescent lighting systems in as few as four years, according to the contractor.

HID lighting can draw up to 460 kilowatt hours of energy per fixture, compared to 224 kwh per fixture for high bay fluorescent systems, according to Allstar. In addition, the metal halide fixtures in HID systems can run temperatures as high as 2000 degrees Fahrenheit, which is a lot of heat to dissipate during the summer, compared to 95 degrees Fahrenheit for fluorescent high bay fixture lamps.

Precision-Paragon recently launched a free web app that helps business owners calculate energy and cost savings for commercial and industrial lighting upgrades. P2 says about 40 percent of the electricity used in a typical commercial building is consumed by lighting.