Earlier this week, I spent a morning on a job-site at a local school district in the Kansas City area with Danny Seymour, construction manager, and Mike Eckard, project manager, from ConEd Solutions, an ESCO (energy-service company company) based in Overland Park, Kan. Not too long ago, ConEd Solutions did a lighting retrofit (along with replacing chillers, roofs and managing some other infrastructure work) for the elementary, middle school and high school facilities for the Piper School District that had helped the district save $70,834 annually in electrical costs and $185,667 in non- electrical costs.
The interesting thing to me on the lighting retrofit is that most of the lamps were either T-5 lamps or compact fluorescents for interior lighting, and T-5 fluorescents for the parking lots. Danny and Mike said no LEDs were considered because they are years away from penciling out in a bid compared to these conventional lighting products for this sort of job. ConEd Solutions does use them occasionally for high-maintenance cost areas such as parking lots, high ceilings in industrial facilities.
Another interesting element of the Piper School District job is that because of all the cost savings from the ConEd Solutions facility retrofit, Steve Adams, Piper's superintendent of schools was able to convince the school board to install an all-weather football field (FieldTurf) & track to replace a much older field. An added bonus -- When Piper's teams are not using the field, the school district rents it out to local soccer and football teams and a women's professional football team.
Look for upcoming article in Electrical Wholesaling about ConEd Solutions and the interesting role it plays in the electrical construction market.