St. Aloysius Academy Upgrades to LED Lighting

GREENandSAVE Staff
Posted on Monday 8th November 2010

On Friday, October 29th at 7:00 PM, St. Aloysius Academy - a Catholic Boys school in Greater Philadelphia - hosted a ‘Green Night’ for the Students and Parents on eco-friendly initiatives to save money and the environment. The event was held in the school’s Gym which was recently retrofitted with LED lights, a lighting upgrade the school hopes to include throughout its campus.

St. Aloysius Academy was founded in 1895 by the Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, and is a private Catholic elementary school for boys Kindergarten through 8th Grade. Located in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, St. Aloysius is a member of the National Catholic Educational Association. The school wanted to find ways to save money on their operations as well as improve the lighting output and quality in its facilities. Recognizing energy efficient lighting as a way to achieve both of these goals, St. Aloysius teamed up with LED Saving Solutions (LSS) to begin the analysis.

In order to get the school the quickest and most substantial Return on Investment (ROI), LSS looked at target areas to find where the payback would be quickest. After locating the target areas, LSS created a custom ‘roll-out’ plan that would help the school save the most money in its high usage areas, allowing the school to finance other parts of the project by the savings realized from the initial upgrade.

LSS’ research discovered that the quickest ROI would come from upgrading the old 450 watt metal halides in the 5,000 square foot gymnasium with 100 watt LED High Bay canopies. The LED canopies helped St. Aloysius reduce the lighting consumption in their gym by 80% yet increased the luminosity of the space by an average of 5 foot candles.

LSS projects a monthly savings of $438 off the schools electricity bill, which translates into $5,266 annually and $215,000 over the life of the LED canopies. This simple switch to LED lighting in the gym of the school will offset 2.6 million pounds of CO2 over the lifetime of the bulbs which is the equivalent of removing 17 SUVs from the road each year.

Due to the cost effectiveness of LED lighting in spaces that are used many hours of the day, the school is continuing to upgrade to LED lighting in hallways and classrooms to further reduce their energy consumption.

“We have gained not only cost-reducing and energy-saving LED lighting, but also a partnership that is helping us to educate our school community about the environment and decision-making that is more eco-friendly” says Sister Stephen Anne Roderiguez, Principal of St. Aloysius Academy.

To ensure that the projected savings are actually realized, LSS is supporting St. Aloysius through monitoring and verifications. Now that the LED canopies are installed LSS and St. Aloysius are monitoring the utility bills to verify the savings and will release the information to the community to fund future upgrades.

For more information on nationwide school energy data and statistics click here.

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