Case Study: Office Lighting Upgrades

JEA offers a range of energy efficiency opportunities to help small businesses save energy and money. Whether you’re installing a new lighting system, or upgrading your HVAC equipment, InvestSmart with JEA has a variety of incentives available. 

Local Newspaper Saves on Lighting Costs

The Florida Times-Union has been a fixture in the Jacksonville community for more than 125 years, providing the latest printed news and current events to area residents. With a print circulation of approximately 222,000, the operations facility located on Riverside Avenue is a bustling hub focused on meeting production deadlines. Robert Todd, Vice President of Operations, explains that “the industrial equipment used in the facility accounts for the vast majority of the electrical usage, however lighting still represents a significant consumption of energy and cost.”

Recent upgrades performed to lighting fixtures in the 30,000 square foot Jacksonville facility allowed for both long term benefits and immediate savings. Robert notes, “It was amazing, we cut the number of fixtures in half, and still have the same level of illumination.”

Robert became aware of the InvestSmart with JEA program and the potential energy efficiency and cost savings opportunities when talking with his lighting contractor, Southpoint Solutions. These opportunities and the available rebates and incentives convinced Robert to InvestSmart with JEA through a lighting retrofit project in his operations facility, which would replace outdated fixtures with newer, more efficient models.

Southpoint Solutions not only provided him with the information he needed, but they also performed the installation, and ultimately removed 65 MH and MV fixtures and replaced them with 37 4-lamp T-8 highbay fixtures.

They also advised Robert on the InvestSmart with JEA program and assisted him through the rebate process, a process that Robert described as “shockingly simple”. He received a rebate in about 60 days, which “felt like money was falling out of the sky”, it was so quick and easy.

The Results: 180,000 kWh Per Year in Energy Savings

The lighting upgrades will result in a total estimated energy savings of 180,000 kWh. With an estimated annual energy cost savings of $16,678, Robert should recover his initial cost in less than two years.

To sum it up, Robert says, “I would recommend the InvestSmart with JEA program because it was all about dollars and cents. You hear that you can save money and might be skeptical, but it was amazing; the math was there and it all added up.”

For more information about commercial lighting rebates, please contact us at:  

• (888) 345-4609
• investsmart@jea.com