Claremont changes lights in community center for savings

By JEFF EPSTEIN
[email protected]
CLAREMONT — The Claremont Savings Bank Community Center is looking a little brighter now. That’s because the city Parks and Recreation Department is changing the building’s 408 lighting fixtures to LED lamps to save electricity costs.

The lamps over the swimming pool, the track, the basketball courts, and most other areas of the facility are already converted. Because the outer coverings have not changed in most cases, the lighting does not look noticeably different to the members or staff. For example, only on close inspection does one notice that the “fluorescent” tubes in the ceiling lights actually contain strips of LEDs.

“They notice it is brighter,” however, said Mark Brislin, parks and recreation director for the City of Claremont.

The project began about a week ago, and is expected to finish by the end of this week, said Parks and Recreation Superintendent Tim Hernon. The center was originally designed in 2007, he said, a time when LEDs for lighting were a vision in the future but not yet available. Only in recent years have they become commercially practical.

The incentive to make the change came from the utility Eversource, which offered the city a rebate under its “prescriptive retrofit” program to switch to the energy-saving LED lamps. Eversource anticpates Claremont will save 151,511 kWh per year, and will receive a rebate of $19,930, said Eversource representative Kaitlyn Woods.

A loan is paying for the initial cost, Hernon said, but he expects that the annual cost savings (which differs by fixtures and usages), plus the Eversource incentive, will eventually pay back the cost of the loan.

The only other recreation facility where LEDs might have gone is Monadnock Park, he said, but the lights there are used enough to make a changeover cost-effective.

The Department of Public Works changed Claremont’s street lights to LEDs about two years ago.