Sunrise Preschools – Jessica Berger – 2010

Goals

Jessica Berger spent her summer as a Climate Corps fellow at Borg Holdings, Inc., the parent company of two chains of child care centers: Sunrise Preschools and Tots Unlimited. She was tasked with evaluating energy efficiency opportunities such as lighting retrofits, internet thermostats and PC power management across the company’s 27 sites.

Solutions

Based on her bottom-up estimates that lighting was accounting for 40% of electricity usage, Berger decided to investigate lighting further. She found that through retrofitting the fluorescent lamps in the sites, the number of lamps and ballasts could be reduced by half and the total input wattage of fixtures cut by 45%.

Potential Impact

In total, Berger identified opportunities that could save Sunrise Preschools up to $1.14 million over the life of the projects. In addition the opportunities could save up to 865,293 kWh of electricity annually.