WASHINGTON -- The state of Georgia has received approximately $82.5 million in economic stimulus funds for the State Energy Program (SEP), said the U.S. Department of Energy's Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy office. One of GEFA's grant recipients, the Georgia Association of Convenience Stores (GACS), created a lighting retrofit fund to implement lighting retrofits on convenience stores.
The funding was allocated to the Georgia Environmental Facilities Authority (GEFA) division of Energy Resources to encourage the adoption of renewable energy and energy efficiency throughout the state. Of the total amount of SEP funding available, GEFA allocated $10 million to create four competitive grant programs for energy efficiency and renewable energy programs.
Since its inception, the GACS fund has retrofit more than 30 c-store locations, including interior lighting (generally T12 to T8 conversions), cooler door lighting (generally with light-emitting diode or LED lights) and outdoor canopy lighting.
The stores were retrofit with no upfront costs to the owners. Rather, the owners pay back into the fund the estimated savings that occurs over the 18-month period after installation.
Not only has the GACS Lighting Retrofit fund resulted in significant savings in energy from the projects themselves, but the fund was the catalyst for the development of this new lighting solution that will continue to evolve in the future.
(See Related Content below for previous CSP Daily News coverage.)
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