The City recently implemented several lighting
upgrades in major facilities such as the three
Parking Garages and the Monterey Sport Center.
The projects replaced lighting fixtures with the
latest lighting technologies available that are
now reducing the average energy consumption by
35%. More importantly: Every kwH saved reduces
the need to produce this energy, thus reducing
the carbon emissions and carbon footprint for
the Monterey peninsula. Our bar chart shows the
energy consumption from 2006 in red bars and
compares them to this year's energy consumption
in teal.
Rebates
help fund the Projects
The projects were partly funded through rebates
received from the California Public Utilities
Commission.
The garage projects were
completed within budget at costs of $640,000.
The City received rebates in the amount of
$75,000. Tracking our energy consumption and
their associated costs, we anticipate annual
cost savings of around $50,000.
The projects in the
Monterey Sport Center started in 2005 with
the replacement of the lighting in the
Gymnasium. In 2007 the City completed the
lighting upgrade by replacing the high-pressure
sodium lights in the swimming pool area with
induction lighting. Therefore our chart shows
the energy consumption prior to 2005b (red bars)
and today (teal bars). When comparing the energy
costs for FY 04/05 and FY 06/07 the annual cost
savings are about $47,000.
Lighting Upgrades Cut Back
on Maintenance Costs
Another very important side effect of the energy
upgrades is that the new lights do have a life
expectancy of more than 100,000 hours compared
to a 30,000 hours, thus cutting back on
replacement cycles and maintenance costs. These
additional savings are estimated to be around
$65,000 over the lifetime of the lights for all
project sites. The timesaving can be now
allocated to other areas in the City that
require our attention and maintenance, thus
raising the standard of our services.
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