Brookshire Brothers in GE lighting upgrade

New York -- Brookshire Brothers has launched a facility-wide lighting update, including in-store, parking lot, exterior signage and refrigerated case fixtures.

Using a combination of new linear fluorescent lighting and LED technologies -- from GE Lighting, East Cleveland, Ohio -- Brookshire will, once all of its stores have been completed, reduce its annual operating costs more than $235,000.

“When we looked at options to impact our total energy costs, we identified several areas at different stores where new lighting, including LED fixtures, made a compelling case, both indoors and out,” said Eric Johnson, director of construction for Brookshire Brothers, in a statement. “Shortly after we met with our GE Lighting team to understand the anticipated electricity and maintenance savings, then made what was an easy decision to move forward.”

Re-lamping of linear fluorescent lighting (LFL) fixtures is now complete at 69 Brookshire Brothers locations where GE’s more energy-efficient 28-watt T8 has replaced 32-watt bulbs in approximately 450 four-lamp fixtures per 30,000-sq-ft. supermarket. These efforts include the replacement of existing ballasts with GE’s high-efficiency UltraMax electronic ballasts as needed. Each UltraMax ballast installed will create additional energy savings of approximately eight watts per fixture.

Brookshire Brothers will save an average $3,200 per store per year in electricity expense after switching to GE’s 28-watt solution – a more than $220,000 annual cost benefit to the company based on a $.09 kWh electricity rate and 12 hours use per day. The company plans to explore even more efficient 25-watt GE lamps and UltraStart ballasts to suit future needs.