And the town said “let there be light … and let it save energy as well”.
Sarah Fisk, a lighting consultant with Light Saver Plus, came to council April 7 to highlight and identify opportunities for energy savings through the light replacement at the seven municipal buildings and explain the incentive program.
Mayor David Anderson said, “We’ve been working with Sarah for the past year and a half – almost two years – as a lighting consultant. We converted our community centre over to energy efficient bulbs.”
Fisk made a presentation to recognize the town’s move into green energy. She said the company Light Saver?Plus, in downtown Harriston, offers energy efficient lighting solutions through fixtures or lightbulbs – interior and exterior.
She noted that she had started with assessments of the local community centres. From there, there were retrofits of the ice surface lights in the town’s arenas in Clifford, Harriston, and Palmerston.
“In doing so, we were able to capture significant energy savings and improve the light quality.”
Mayor David Anderson said there was turnover and payoff.
“Obviously there was a bit of a cost to the town, but we’d applied for a grant to make use of Fisk’s services.”
Fisk said there were various grants that were used, including an Eco-Challenge grant that covered up to 25% of the project cost.
Recreation Director David Stonley said that because dollars are very short in the current economy, the town arranged a deal, renting the equipment to own.
“What we were trying to do was capture the savings, and use the savings to pay down the lease to use less municipal dollars as possible.”
Anderson cited the plaques that state the various energy savings being generated by the initiatives.
He cited efforts in the Palmerston arena had eliminated 25,4377kg of carbon dioxide per year or five cars or adding eight acres of rainforest, “and that is for only one arena. It gives an idea what retrofits of these arenas are doing for us.”
