Lighting upgrades in NC schools saves hundreds of thousands annually

Jonah Doeller says he's loved sharing the joys of physical education with students over the past two decades at Union Chapel School in Robeson County. On any given weekday, giggles and thumps can be heard bouncing off of the modest cinder block walls inside the school's gymnasium, a space that recently received a much-needed facelift.

Union Chapel was one of 60 schools that recently received new high-efficiency LED lights. A green upgrade that Doeller says makes a big difference.

"It's like night and day," Doeller said. "The kids noticed right away too. It's brighter and clearer and the gym looks twice as big now.

The lights are motion-sensored and the kids have fun in the mornings racing to see who can be the first to turn on all the lights. More efficient bulbs that stay on for less time translates to a notable reduction in the cost to the school and to the environment.

According to estimates from NC Greenpower, the non-profit that coordinated the light installation project, schools across the state will collectively save more than $250,000 each year.

"That money can obviously go very far at the schools that we work with in the most economically distressed areas of North Carolina.," said Katie Lebrato, communications director for NC Greenpower. "Some of the schools were really excited because they hadn’t been able to get funding to just change a lightbulb."

The NC Department of Environmental Quality awarded NC Greenpower nearly $800,000 for replacement gymnasium lighting, prioritizing schools with high energy use, funding challenges, and have multipurpose uses for gyms, including as emergency shelters.

Originally NC Greenpower thought those funds could only cover upgrades for 40 schools, but through vendor selection and utility rebates, the non-profit was able to replace the gym lights in 60 schools across the state. Those schools will save an estimated $85,000 and 600,000 pounds of carbon annually.

"We received about five times as many applications as our funding allowed," Lebrato said.

After completing the DEQ project and seeing the need across the state, NC Greenpower used reserve funding to replace all of the lights in 9 additional schools with LEDs and replace a broken HVAC system in one Durham school. Those schools will collectively save an estimated $180,000 dollars and 1.4 million pounds of carbon each year with the upgrades.

NC Greenpower is a non-profit celebrating its 20th anniversary, originally formed by Advanced Energy, a non-profit energy efficiency consulting firm based in Raleigh.