Effective January 5th, 2009, Idaho Power has improved their Easy Upgrades program by increasing the incentives available to building owners performing energy-efficient lighting retrofits.

Since early 2007, Idaho Power's Easy Upgrades program has helped commercial and industrial property owners improve their existing buildings. Easy Upgrades offers incentives of up to $100,000 for enhancing the efficiency of ighting, cooling systems and other commercial equipment. Since its introduction, over 600 energy-saving projects have been completed and earned incentive payments through the Easy Upgrades program. Those projects are saving more than 30 million kilowatt hours per year, enough energy to power about 2,000 typical homes.

The table below summarizes the incentives available for lighting retrofit projects through Idaho Power's Easy Upgrades program:

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Welcome to the first in a series of lighting retrofit case studies we will be publishing in the coming months.  In this series, we highlight customers in various industries that have gone through a lighting retrofit in their facility to take advantage of more energy-efficient technology.  This lighting retrofit case study can be used as an example of what is attainable via a lighting retrofit by those interested in undergoing similar retrofit projects.  If you have a facility type that we have not covered, please feel free to leave a comment or contact us.  We have been involved in many lighting retrofit projects and may be able to call upon our previous clients for specific data needed for a case study.

Company Background

Innovative Packaging produces all types of corrugated packaging products and serves the Indiana, Michigan and Ohio markets. The company designs all products to customer specifications and can take projects from conception to a final corrugated piece delivered to the customers location. That final product may be a printed or labeled carton, point of purchase display with graphics, or any number of specialty die cuts.

The Opportunity

Innovative Packaging operates out of a 118,800 square foot facility that is used for both production and warehousing.  Prior to the lighting retrofit, the facility was predominantly lit with 400 W Metal Halide fixtures.  Light levels were very low throughout the area so the company had also installed 4' and 8' T12 Linear Fluorescent strips over work areas to improve the light levels where needed.

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T5 and T5HO fluorescent high bay fixtures and other T5-based specialty lights are built around a linear fluorescent tube lamp.  Like other types of lamps, the number in the name of the lamp reflects its size.  The “T5” name reflects the diameter of the tube in eighths of an inch.  A T5 lamp is five-eighths of an inch (5/8”).  Similarly, a T8 lamp is eight-eighths (or one inch) in diameter and a T12 is 12 eighths (or 1-1/2 inches) in diameter.  One of the features that make a T5 bulb and T5-based high bay light fixtures more efficient is the fact that the lamp is 37% narrower tube than a T8 and over 55% narrower than a T12 lamp.

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