The Green Ideas Group presents the Green Ideas Achievement Award to call attention to its clients who achieve significant environmental impacts through reductions in energy usage.
Management of the gas station/[image-nocss] convenience store chain accepted a Green Ideas Group recommendation presented through Green Ideas to replace 46 320-watt Metal Halide (MH) lighting fixtures one-for-one with 127-watt High Intensity Fluorescent (HIF) fixtures manufactured by the GES Co.
"When our Green Ideas contactwhom I knew from previous experiencecalled me and asked if we'd be interested in looking at a project like this, I told him 'absolutely'," said Q Stop general manager Rich Berliner.
"We had some concerns," he added. "Sure, we liked the idea of reducing our energy costs, but we had to make sure the lighting was going to be functionally and aesthetically similar to what we had. We also liked being able to do something responsible toward the environment, which gas stations don't always get the opportunity to do or get any credit for when they do achieve it. So we settled on this one store to do a test stationto do an entire canopy and give it a couple months to see what it does to our energy costs, see how the lights burn, how they look. So far, so good."
Berliner said, "This award is a very nice surprise. It's nice recognition for the company and is right in line with corporate policy. We try to be responsible members of our community in everything we do."
These savings and environmental benefits are possible because HIF lightinga fairly recent developmentuses less than half the current of High Intensity Discharge lighting, including the metal halide type formerly used by Q Stop IV while producing comparable or better light levels.
Q Stop's change produced a power saving of some 58,115 kilowatt-hours (kWh) per year. According to accepted EPA formulas, a saving this size will remove 43.5 tons of carbon dioxide, 320 pounds of sulfur dioxide and 740 pounds of nitrogen oxides per yearall greenhouse gasesfrom the atmosphere. The reduction's effect can also be compared to an 11-acre growth of mature trees or taking eight cars off the road, and is the energy equivalent of saving 5,283 gallons of gasoline per year.
The environmental benefit of the Q Stop IV project, however, is not the end of the story, the company said.
"Q Stop received an energy efficiency incentive of some $2,400 from Ameren, their utility, to do this project," said Tim Eylander, a managing member of the Green Ideas Group, Hinsdale, Ill. "I'm sure utilities wouldn't offer rebates if the project involved had no energy-saving promise, but the fact is that rebates have been the practice of many utilities across the country for several years now. And replacement of Metal Halide lighting with HIF is not iffy to themas far as saving energy goes, it's a slam dunk. And the fact that Q Stop received a rebate for changing just 46 lights means a company doesn't have to be a giant to participate."
The Green Ideas Group, an energy-efficiency company, works with an independent network of partners to implement turnkey energy efficient lighting solutions across the nation. Its "Green Biz in a Box" offers emerging energy-efficient lighting products and solutions.
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