Property
Committee energy reduction project
In 2017 the committee embarked on a project to reduce parish energy consumption. In addition to the electricity used on Sundays and other worship periods, there are several groups we host that utilize that parish spaces during the week. These include two AA groups, Weight Watchers, the Drummers Circle, a Yoga class and a Doctor of Chiropractic medicine. We started the project in the worship space, where we were able to convert all the high ceiling and wall mounted incandescent bulbs to low energy LED’s. Our power usage there decreased from at total of 2200 watts to 240 watts. Members of the property committee donated all of the LED’s.
The next year we replaced all our 40 watt fluorescent bulbs with direct replacement LED’s that use 16 watts. The fixtures were in both offices, choir room, utility room, library, stairwells, rest rooms, fellowship hall, and altar guild room. About 100 bulbs were swapped and our utility, Penelec, paid the entire cost through a rebate program to promote reduced energy usage. An important part of the project was to obtain an LED replacement that did not require modification of the ballast wiring on each of the 100 fixtures. We were able to locate such a replacement bulbs for only $5 per bulb, which matched the amount of the rebate available. Our power use for lighting in the parish hall dropped from 4 kilowatts per hour to 1.6 kW.
In 2019 and 2020, we finished the final phase of the project by completing the change over from high intensity discharge (HID) parking lot lights to all LED. This took more planning and expertise than the first two phases. The light poles were more than 22 ft high and not safely reached using a ladder. The fixtures were 220 volts, to accommodate the HID bulbs, but they had to be modified to deliver just 120 volts for the new LED’s. A parishioner introduced us to a neighbor who provides bucket truck and some electrical work pro bono, for certain churches. Bruce Overfield a qualified elecrician, was also able to rewire the fixtures to reduce voltage to 120 v. The completion involved several trips to the Home Depot, as the first set of lights were too big for one set of the fixtures, and we had to modify the reflector opening for the other set. On the large fixtures we used a pair of Feit Electric, Led Corn style bulbs, producing 4000 lumens, at 38 watts (total 76 watts). On the smaller poles we installed a pair of Cree Lighting 2000 lumen LED bulbds using 18 watts each (total 36 watts). Energy consumption for the parking lot lights was reduced from 600 watts to 112 watts. In the winter months the lights are illuminated from as early as 4:30 PM to 10 PM, to accommodate the groups.
Looking forward, we see that there are still energy saving opportunities on our campus. Updating to presence sensing light switches in the three restrooms is one possible step.
