by Ann Withanee — November 18, 2011—A lighting project recently completed by Bluestone Energy for a food distribution center will provide a 950,000 kWh reduction in annual electrical consumption and a payback of less than one year. Bluestone Energy is a division of OpTerra Energy Group and provider of energy conservation engineering and project development services for industrial and commercial clients.
Bluestone Energy designed and implemented a three-part lighting retrofit for a 260,000 square-foot facility at the Northeast branch of National DCP (NDCP), a national supply chain manager that is owned and operated by the franchisees of Dunkin’ Brands, Inc. and services over 6,000 Dunkin’ Donuts and Baskin Robbins outlets nationwide.
In dry-storage areas, Bluestone Energy replaced bi-level Metal Halide (MH) lighting with High Intensity Fluorescent (HIF) lighting equipped with occupancy sensors. In coolers and freezers, Bluestone converted the MH lighting to LED fixtures with software control.
The project, which significantly reduces the facility’s carbon footprint, had an additional bonus: it received from National Grid an $80,000 incentive that enabled the project to pay for itself in less than one year.
