This winter the city of Washington is looking into two energy efficiency projects that could have big savings. The first project involves a program sponsored by Ameren Missouri.
The program helps the city replace fluorescent bulbs.
“There’s a program, with Ameren, where we can get grant money to take those out of service and put new lights up that are more energy efficient,” City Administrator Jim Briggs said. “We’re looking into doing that.”
Briggs said the bulbs that can be replaced are known as T12 lights. He said they currently can be found in several city buildings across town.
“These are the larger flourescent lights,” he said. “You replace the ballast and the light fixture and then put a low voltage light fixture in there and it puts out the same wattage and the same lumens, but the energy cost is lower.”
Briggs said the city will need to do an inventory of lights to see how many can be replaced.
The grant proposal will cover close to 50 percent of the costs with the city picking up the rest.
“The payback is less than five years in the savings, Briggs said.
The proposal is expected to be presented to the city council in January.
“We have to have that completed, the applications in and the installations in by the 15th of April, so that’s really quick, especially for government.”
Streetlights
In addition to looking at indoor lights, Briggs said the city is also looking at city-owned streetlights. He said those can be found along Jefferson Street, Main Street, and the parking lot downtown on Front Street.
“We’re going to look at the streetlights the city owns and see if we can put in LED lights,” Briggs said. “We’ll see what we can do there and see if there’s a savings.”
Briggs said there isn’t a grant involved with this project. He said the city needs to see how much it would cost to make the switch to LEDs and how quickly it could make the money back on energy efficiency savings.
“We’ll get the inventory of all the lights we have, what it would require to convert them to LEDs and then the cost for the materials and the labor — if we have the people on hand or if we have to contract that out.”
Briggs said it’s unknown what would have to be done to make the switch because of varying styles.
“We have two or three different styles in town,” he said. We’ll have to check on each one of those and see what’s required to change them out and see if we can change them to LEDs and what that would entail.”
Briggs said if the project makes financial sense, it could be completed this winter.
Emissourian.com