Nearly 10 years ago, Burr Ridge-based Kiser Controls Co. declined a potential overhaul of its fluorescent lighting to LED because it cost too much. That changed this year when a supplier referred Kiser to a state program that rewards companies for reducing energy consumption.

As Michael Daniels, Kiser Controls Co. Purchasing and Inventory Control Manager, says, he didn’t expect a routine replacement of fluorescent lighting to result in a complete overhaul of the interior and exterior lighting for this west suburban industrial supply house. Daniels learned about the small business program with ComEd through his lighting supply company. After researching the program, he was referred to Sustainable Lighting Solutions, a certified trade ally.

Kiser Controls Co. primarily supplies manufacturers in northwest Indiana and northern Illinois with industrial supplies, from air valves to vacuum pumps. Its 10,000-square foot building includes professional offices and a warehouse, and is typically lit five days a week for 12 hours a day. The interior was lit with fluorescent lights and the exterior with metal halide.

Kiser Controls Co. President Kerry Kiser says the interior lighting had become inconsistent because replacement bulbs were commonly replaced with those manufactured by different companies. Some employees had twisted the fluorescent bulbs off because they didn’t like the light, and other areas such as the warehouse would certainly benefit from greater coverage. Kiser was also concerned about the safety outside the building when the metal halide lighting repeatedly burned out.

When Daniels presented the proposal to convert to LED, Kiser said the decision was a “no brainer”. Kiser received more than $14,000 in energy efficiency incentives through ComEd. The Smart Ideas program is funded by Illinois consumers and businesses that pay an energy efficiency fee each month. Daniels and Kiser appreciated the fact that Kiser Controls was able to receive funding from a program that it already paid into.

After the install, “right away I recognized the color balance and the consistency of light throughout the building,” Kiser says. “We are really happy that we finally did it. It certainly didn’t make sense in 2007, but it did today.”

Sustainable Lighting Solutions installed more than 100 fixtures inside and outside the building. The new energy efficient lighting coupled with occupancy sensors will save Kiser Controls more than $5,400 annually in energy and maintenance costs. Sustainable Lighting Solutions presented Kiser Controls Co. with an Environmental Stewardship Award for the project’s impact, which will decrease its annual energy consumption by more than 50,000 kWh.

“When it was complete it was almost like walking into a brand-new office and feeling a jolt of energy and excitement. Everything looked so good,” Daniels says of the LED replacements.

Kiser agrees. Arriving to the office early in the morning and having such bright light throughout the office has certainly improved his outlook, he says. Moreover, the fact that Sustainable managed the incentive process with ComEd as well as disposed of all of the old fluorescent tubes was a bonus.

“Sustainable Lighting Solutions managed the project like we manage our customers,” Kiser says. “We want to do everything that we can to keep our customers focused on running their business, and Sustainable allowed us to do that.”

The Chicagoland Laborers’ District Council Training and Apprentice Fund (Chicagoland Laborers) began in the summer of 1986. It was designed to provide something vital: training and education for Laborers working under the Chicagoland District Council collective bargaining agreement. The staff is open to developing training courses to meet the specific needs of either the Contractor or Union membership. It is a place where people work together to learn and grow with the ever-evolving industry standards.

The Carol Stream facility opened in 1990 to support the needs of Laborers in a nine county region. The site trains approximately 4,000 – 5,000 people per year by offering day, night and weekend classes, and operating 50 hours per week on average.

Challenge

“We need people to want to come back, and to do that we need to provide a positive learning environment.” In discussing a recent project at his facility, Keith Vitale, Training Director for the Chicagoland Laborers’ Carol Stream, Illinois training center highlighted a key challenge facing educational and training facilities, namely the impact that lighting plays in the learning environment. “You can see it on our participants’ faces. Bright lights enhance rooms, but walking into a dim, dingy room, isn’t very motivating.”

Recognizing that their lighting must be improved during the recent renovation of their 26-year-old facility, the Chicagoland Laborers also identified another challenge facing education retrofit projects – how to upgrade their facility without disrupting classes. Or as Vitale put it, “we were not closing the school to do a lighting project.” So the Chicagoland Laborers were faced with identifying a way to upgrade their lighting system while co-existing with the educational and training services that they provided. This was particularly important to them, for as Vitale explained, “if one of our members come here for training and they do not feel that we provided a good product, they won’t come back.”

Solution

Faced with upgrading an interior lighting system that served classrooms, cafeterias and training bays, as well as offices, conferences rooms, hallways and storage areas, Chicagoland Laborers turned to Sustainable Lighting Solutions (“SLS”) to help them identify the best system to meet their facility’s particular lighting needs. SLS showed thema number of options, but the Chicagoland Laborers chose Orion Lighting’s APOLLO LED LDR Troffer Retrofit and Orion’s Fluorescent Compact Modular High Bay, as well as a few LED downlights and fluorescent retrofit kits to complete the interior project. The interior lighting project was projected to reduce a site’s electrical demand by 48.4 kW or almost 60% of their existing demand. The project will save them over 190,000 kWh, which should reduce their ComEd electric bill by over $20,000 per year. When asked why they chose Orion, Vitale answered, “we had looked at other options, but when SLS showed us the Orion fixtures, we stopped. They were aesthetically pleasing, fit our décor, and when we saw how simple it was to install them, It was an easy decision.”

Result

The Orion products chosen by SLS met the visual, design and performance requirements that the Chicagoland Laborers had set forth for the Carol Stream Training retrofit project. The products also allowed SLS’s installation team to limit facility disruptions during the retrofit, which was critical to the Union. As Vitale explained, “The installation was seamless. We were able to operate as if they were not even there with zero interruption to classes.”

The Chicagoland Laborers was also impressed by Orion’s product packaging and quick shipping approach (two to three weeks) and how they helped ease the installation process for SLS. Vitale explained that, “the installation was so organized. Everything was separated and ready to go when the installers got to the site.” Orion’s fixtures are packaged in trays for easy removal from the package. In addition, the package doubles as a recycling vessel, which makes for a debris-free install and cleanup.

The Chicagoland Laborers staff and students were impressed by how quickly SLS could retrofit a space. Often during the project, whole classrooms were able to be retrofitted during the time participants were working in a training bay. The students would leave the room for a field training exercise, and during that time SLS would replace the 9-10 lights in the room. The student reaction was immediate, “they thought the lights were dimmed before their field experience and had been brought up to full light upon their return to the classroom,” Vitale said.

The Orion product helped demonstrate the importance of lighting to learning, Vitale said, and he added that now he considers himself a strong proponent of the impact that lighting can have on students’ performance. The impact is obvious, he said, “good lighting makes our students more attentive and more eager to learn. It can help make students feel more comfortable and safer, especially if they have not been in a classroom in a while.” I have never really thought of lighting as part of education, and how it impacted the learning environment until we went from our yellow lights to the Orion LED lights.”

Enhancing the classroom lighting led to additional classroom improvements at the Chicagoland Laborers training facility. LCD projectors were replaced with televisions used by instructors to present training and education. The old LCD projectors required the trainers to shut off the lights, which created the potential for classroom disruption.

They use televisions to show the same video materials, and the lights stay on. As Vitale explained, “keeping the lights on helps keep students awake and alert, which facilitates our learning methodologies and our student projects.”

The Chicagoland Laborers appreciate the significant impact lighting had on bringing their 26-year-old building back to life. Moreover, the Chicagoland Laborers is seeing significant tangible benefits from the project. Vitale mentioned that since the project has been installed, “our utility savings are tracking at 30% per month, as compared with the10-15% that we had planned to see.”

When the education improvements and energy saving were combined, the Chicagoland Laborers were prompted to work with SLS to replace the four-year-old lighting in their Chicago training facility. As Vitale put it, “the transformation here was so profound, it made it an easy decision to replace the lights in the new building.”

The lighting at Concentric AB’s manufacturing facility in Rockford, IL was similar to many other large spaces – either too bright or too dark, and certainly too expensive to power and maintain. Switching to a LED solution from SLS not only improved employees’ work environment, it saved the company close to $9k per month in energy and maintenance costs.

Concentric AB is one of the world’s leading pump manufacturers. Its Rockford, IL facility manufactures an array of hydraulic pumps and motors. The 20-acre campus, including the 125,000 square foot hydraulic plant, was built in 1964 and was undergoing a facelift. Manufacturing Engineer and Facility Manager Martin Moesgaard explained that most of the lighting was fluorescent and dated. Employees disliked it so much they often unscrewed the bulbs near their work spaces due to the glare on their computer screens.

“I called Sustainable Lighting Solutions to look into switching our fluorescent lighting over to LED,” Moesgaard says. SLS developed a plan that included sensors to save additional energy costs, and offered to install pilot light fixtures for the company to review before signing off on the full project. Once the new lighting was in place, employees responded immediately.

“Over the years, people just unscrewed the fluorescents. They didn’t like the glare on their computers. When the new lights were piloted, the engineers responded positively to the new fixtures and the even distribution of the light. They were asking to have the project done quickly” Moesgaard said.

Concentric employs 177 people at its Rockford campus, where the manufacturing plant runs in three shifts. Moesgaard was concerned about finding an optimal time for the installation, without causing disruption to operations, as well as how the new fixtures would fit into the building’s 1964 drop-down ceiling architecture.

“Overall the installation went smooth. They were always on top of the communication, and they were very flexible in working around our schedule,” Moesgaard says. “SLS came in on the second shift. They also installed some new parts within drop ceilings to make the retrofit easier and aesthetically appear more pleasing.”

One of the most pleasant surprises of the project, Moesgaard says, was learning about the significant rebates that SLS could secure to fund part of the project. All businesses and consumers pay into the state’s energy efficiency program fund every month, which funds ComEd’s Smart Ideas program. Moesgaard had previously completed the Smart Ideas application for an air compressor rebate, and found the process time consuming. He was pleased that SLS handled all of the paperwork for the rebate, which came to $73,000.

“SLS managing that process was a big plus,” Moesgaard said. “And I really liked knowing that I was getting my money back from that fund, for the benefit of my company.”

Currently, Concentric is on track to save on average 750 kilowatt hours annually, which accounts for 1/8 of its energy consumption.

“Overall, we have been very pleased,” says Moesgaard. “People say their eyes aren’t as tired or strained as before, and I’m happy that we’re getting some of our money back!”

The Chicagoland Laborers’ District Council Training and Apprentice Fund began in the summer of 1986. It was designed to provide something vital: training and education for laborers working under the Chicagoland District Council collective bargaining agreement. The staff is open to developing training courses to meet the specific needs of either the contractor or Union membership. It is a place where people work together to learn and grow with the ever-evolving industry standards.

The Homer Street facility was opened in 2009 as an alternative location for members to receive training. The site trains approximately 3,000 people per year by offering day, night and weekend classes, and operating 50 hours per week on average.

Challenge

“Some of our members can be uncomfortable with the training process, and when you add in a place that is not conducive to learning, it makes our job harder,” explained Richard Schumann, the administrator for the Chicagoland Laborer’s Training and Apprentice Fund’s Homer Street facility. Schumann highlighted one of the key challenges facing all educational facilities – student engagement, which is critical to educational success. “We have people coming in after an eight hour shift for a four to six hour training session. We need to keep them engaged.”

The Union’s existing lighting system was very dull and, according to Schumann, it counteracted their trainers’ efforts to create the best atmosphere for learning. As Schumann put it, “when the lights are dull, it is hard to learn.” The Union realized that they needed to upgrade their lighting system. Although the building was only seven years old, their lights were not creating an engaging learning environment and were already becoming costly to operate and maintain. They also needed to upgrade their facility without disrupting educational and training services.

Solution

The Chicagoland Laborers selected Sustainable Lighting Solutions (“SLS”) to design a lighting system upgrade that made their facility more engaging and reduced their operating costs. SLS proposed replacing the facility’s existing T8 Troffers with Orion Lighting’s APOLLO LED LDR Troffer Retrofit Fixtures and their Metal Halide High Bays with Orion’s Compact Modular Fluorescent High Bay fixtures. The units are designed to significantly reduce the cost of operating and maintaining the training facility’s lighting system. The system was projected to save over 160,000 kWh, leading to over $17,000 per year in energy savings.

The Union chose SLS and Orion’s product based on the success they had seen when SLS retrofitted their Carol Stream, IL facility. Additionally, SLS’s installation flexibility, provided in part by Orion’s quick shipping approach (two to three weeks) and product packaging for easy removal from trays that doubled as recycling containers, was also a key component in choosing to proceed with the project. In fact, as Schumann noted, “SLS’s installation team worked around the classrooms that were in use. Half the time we did not even know they were in the building.” Moreover, Orion’s APOLLO LDR products are the first patented LED troffer retrofit contained within the door frame and can be typically installed in under two minutes per fixture. These product features helped SLS’s team work quickly and be flexible in their installation, which allowed the Union to retrofit their facility without impacting their training schedule.

Result

The retrofit project delivered in its primary objective of improving the classroom learning environments. “The lighting project has delivered noticeable improvements in student engagement,” Schumann said, “and the difference in classroom is 90% of what we needed.” The training staff also feels that the overall atmosphere in the facility has improved and students seem to have even more enthusiasm thanks to the new lighting. Additionally, the facility is already seeing a measurable reduction in the electrical consumption and the electric bill.

When asked what he would tell other education facilities considering a lighting upgrade, Schumann concluded that “the experience has been well worth it, not just because of the cost savings, but because of all the benefits – especially the improvements to the learning environment.”

Download a PDF of this case study, which was developed by lighting partner Orion: