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A King County employee's bright idea: Greener
light bulbs
 Watch
this video clip (Real Media) Length: (3:04)
Watch this video clip (Windows Media) Length:
(3:04)
<<Sounds of lights being replaced.>>
Narrator Says:
You could call it the ‘bright’ idea that will save King County some big
bucks and at the same time help the environment.
The county’s Road Services Maintenance Headquarters in Renton was built
in the early 1970’s and at that time outfitted with these standard
fluorescent light bulbs.
Now, more than 30 years later, some of the county’s roads employees are
leading the way in creating a greener, more energy efficient workplace.
Alex Ho, a King County Road Services engineer learned about a Puget
Sound Energy program that provides rebates of up to 50 percent in
exchange for the implementation of energy-saving measures.
Along with some of his colleagues, Alex proposed the replacement of the
old fluorescent bulbs with newer, far more efficient models.
PSE accepted the proposal and awarded the road services division with a
$76,000 grant to move forward with the replacement project.
King County Engineering Technician Rick Meininger Says:
This is 'A' building at the Renton site. It's the administrative
building which functions as an office, and an emergency event dispatch
building, and is manned 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. It's
approximately 3,700 square feet in size. There are 93 fixtures that had
retrofit kits installed nine old fixtures had been removed. There were
eight motion sensors were installed and 3 existing signs upgraded. And
the estimated energy savings for this building was 26k kilowatts hours
per year.
<<Sounds of lights being replaced.>>
We're over at ‘K’ building now and you can see the contractor behind me,
is on site doing some of the retrofit work. He's swapping out the T-12
light bulbs for the T-8's. The T-12's are usually about a 12,000 hour
bulb, and the t-8's are going to be a 30k hour bulb. So, we're going to
be saving about 2.5 times the energy on these lights here, and it's also
going to cut down on maintenance and the waste of light bulbs.
Narrator Says:
Speaking of kilowatt hours per year, the entire facility’s consumption
will be cut by more than half in 2008.
The prior number of kilowatt hours, about 445,000 will drop to just
220,000.
On top of the money saved in reduced energy consumption, a little over
$15,000, the county will receive a rebate from Puget Sound Energy of
$76,000.
The reduction in energy use is not only due to the more efficient bulbs.
King County Engineering Technician Rick Meininger Says:
We're over at buildings 'K' and 'L' now; they're 9,600 square feet each.
They're used as storage and a parking garage for division crews.
Previously the lights were on 24 hours a day, we've since installed a
timer switch located right over here on the wall, where the crews can
come in and turn the lights on for any amount of time and they'll
automatically go off. We've also installed photo sensors up on the roof,
and a center row of emergency lights in the middle of the building.
Narrator Says:
In all, more than 700 of the older fluorescent T-12 bulbs will be
replaced with the newer T-8’s, helping the Renton facility comply with
King County Executive Ron Sims’ call in 2006 for the county to reduce
energy use by 10 percent by the year 2012.
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