By Joe Boomgaard | MiEnergy
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Bob McKenzie, left, facilities manager at Van Eerden Foodservice Co., and Eric DeVries, right, systems engineer at Midwest Energy Group, worked together to design a lighting retrofit project at Van Eerden’s warehouse in Grand Rapids. By using existing fixtures and fitting a new type of bulb and by employing an energy management system that lights areas on-demand, the company was able to start saving thousands of dollars a month in energy costs. PHOTOS: JOE BOOMGAARD

GRAND RAPIDS — There are good ideas and then there are no-brainers.

For Van Eerden Foodservice Co., it was a “no-brainer” to invest in a lighting retrofit project that would help it reduce its overall energy costs, said Bob McKenzie, facilities manager at the company.

Van Eerden Foodservice worked with Kalamazoo-based Midwest Energy Group LLC after the energy services provider performed a review of the entire building and identified lighting as having the quickest return on investment for energy savings at its Ionia Avenue SW facility. The food service distribution company’s warehouse has storage rooms that vary in temperature from -10º F to close to ambient temperature, or about 60-65º F in the warmest area. The facility also has a great deal of moisture, which drove the decision-making process for which lights would work the best.

Midwest Energy recommended the company switch to induction lighting, which allowed it to use its existing fixtures while reducing wattage from 400 watts to 150 watts per bulb, as well as implement an energy management lighting control system, said Eric DeVries, systems engineer at Midwest Energy. The programmable software, coupled with occupancy sensors, would help Van Eerden customize its lighting system to meet its needs while also cutting back on waste.

“We’re constantly looking at ways to save on our energy use and be green, so to speak,” McKenzie told MiEnergy. “The induction lighting we did put in, it has a lot better ROI than I initially thought it would. I was quite impressed ­– with the first month through, they took $8,000 right off the top (of the electric bill).”

DeVries had estimated a savings of between $4,000-$9,000 per month for an overall annual savings of $78,000 per year. The project covered 303 light fixtures in Van Eerden’s high-bay, 187,000-square-foot warehouse, plus some changes to the lighting in the company’s offices.

With the energy management system keeping some of the lights off for about half the day, “it’s a big deal,” DeVries said. He studied how Van Eerden stocked its warehouse – quick-moving items are stored in the front, while slower-moving items are in the back of the warehouse – and programmed the system so that certain fixtures were always on, but others in low-traffic areas were triggered when fork trucks set off individual aisle occupancy sensors.

He was able to keep costs low by using the company’s existing fixtures, replacing the ballasts with a frequency generator and installing an induction lamp in place of the old bulbs.

“The other big piece and one of the big motivators for the project are that these bulbs are long-lasting,” Jon Potvin, sales manager for Midwest Energy, told MiEnergy, noting the 100,000-hour replacements have four to five times the life of the old lights. “From an operations and maintenance standpoint, those are significant savings as well.”

The entire project cost about $165,000, but Van Eerden received a $58,500 incentive from Consumers Energy. The company was also eligible to claim a tax deduction of 60¢ per square foot off the cost of the purchase through the Energy Policy Act (EPACT) of 2005. EPACT, a Department of Energy program, allows building owners to claim the deduction when they install new lighting systems that reduce the power density by 40 percent and use an energy management system.

“We’re always looking at the ROI, but with the return we had, the incentives made it happen a lot faster,” McKenzie said. “We probably would still have done it, but this was a no-brainer. When the payback is 0.9 year, that answer is not hard to get.”

“The incentives help people move forward quicker,” Potvin said. “When you’re throwing in almost $60,000 and a tax deduction, it cuts the payback periods in half or more. The incentives aren’t there forever, but now, they’re why people can make investments like this in a challenging environment.”

The project allowed the company to reduce its CO2 emissions by 611 metric tons per year, the equivalent emissions to removing 120 passenger vehicles from the road for a year or about the annual electricity usage of 74 homes, according to a Department of Energy calculator.

The lighting project also helped improve the facility’s Energy Star rating from 19 to 35; 50 is average.

“The building is getting much closer to the average for a refrigerated warehouse,” DeVries said.

As odd as it might seem, the lighting project also helped Van Eerden secure an SBA loan to purchase the facility, which it had been leasing. One condition of the SBA loan was that the company had to achieve a 10 percent energy reduction or have a plan in place to achieve that reduction.

“They were able to achieve 10 percent in just the lighting alone,” DeVries said. “They got a taste for energy efficiency paybacks, and now they’re saying, ‘What can we do next?’”