In early 2005, Cinemark, with 310 theaters and 3,349 screens in the U.S. and abroad, began replacing 11-watt 11S14 incandescent lamps with 2-W Micro-Brite cold cathode fluorescent lamps from Litetronics in its exterior marquees and some interior menu boards, Energy & Power Management reports. Art Justice, Cinemark’s energy manager, estimates that more than half of Cinemark’s U.S. theaters are now using a total of 80,000 Micro-Brite lamps. Electric demand for certain signs has dropped from 27.5 to 5 kilowatts.
 
“This is good not only for us financially, but helps us fulfill our responsibility as a large energy user to conserve,” Justice said.

The 25,000 hour life of the lamp, and the fact that they could function in temperatures as cold as -20° F, made them ideal for Cinemark theaters operating in colder locations. Justice estimates that they would have gone through hundreds more incandescent lamps in the same period. Since a given marquee sign may have as many as 2500 lamps, this gave Cinemark a huge savings on maintenance costs.