Healthy savings: GE LED garage fixtures reduce maintenance costs, save energy for Michigan's Spectrum Health

Spectrum Health of Grand Rapids, Mich., one of the state's largest not-for-profit health systems, has an aggressive customer-centered sustainability program. When focusing on revamping their parking decks used by patients, visitors, and employees, they had three goals in mind: improve security, reduce maintenance costs and save energy. After retrofitting 1.25 million square feet of parking garage space and more than 3,500 parking spaces with 1,500 GE Evolve™ LED Garage fixtures, Spectrum accomplished its three goals at the medical center.

Lighting is a vital component when updating security measures in a parking facility. “Our patients and employees are our first priority,” said Tom Theoret, director of facilities for Spectrum Health. “It’s important that everyone feels welcome and secure while at our facilities. GE Lighting’s LED fixtures not only met this requirement but also reduced our energy consumption and reduced burdensome maintenance.”

The GE Evolve LED Garage fixture uses cutting-edge technology, featuring an advanced LED low glare optical system coupled with a unique thermal management system to ensure long life and excellent photometric performance—that is, casting light where it’s needed without trespassing into areas it’s not.

The upgrade has saved the facility nearly $170,000 annually in combined energy and maintenance expenses, helping to further fulfill Spectrum’s environmental efforts. By replacing older 175-watt high-pressure sodium (HPS) fixtures, with GE’s 60-watt Evolve LED lights, the hospital will see a 67 percent energy reduction, yielding 1.6 million kilowatt hours (kWh) of energy savings annually.

Spectrum also installed 50-watt GE Lumination™ LED Recessed Troffers in ceilings in entrance/exit corridors, replacing 150-watt high-intensity discharge (HID) fixtures. The 2' x 2' troffers are as thin as the width of a finger and emit a crisp, uniform light to brightly illuminate spaces inside the garage.

Combining overall savings from maintenance costs, energy costs, a Novation rebate, and a Consumers Energy utility rebate, Spectrum will realize project payback in just three years.

About Spectrum Health

Spectrum Health is a not-for-profit health system in West Michigan offering a full continuum of care through the Spectrum Health Hospital Group, which is comprised of nine hospitals including Helen DeVos Children's Hospital, a state-of-the-art children's hospital that opened in January 2011, and 190 service sites; the Spectrum Health Medical Group and West Michigan Heart, physician groups totaling more than 600 providers; and Priority Health, a health plan with 625,000 members. Spectrum Health is West Michigan’s largest employer with more than 18,000 employees. The organization provided $176.5 million in community benefit during its 2011 fiscal year. In 2011 and 2010, Spectrum Health was named a Top 10 Health System by Thomson Reuters.

About GE Lighting

GE Lighting invents with the vigor of its founder Thomas Edison to develop energy-efficient solutions that change the way people light their world in commercial, industrial, municipal and residential settings. The business employs over 17,000 people in more than 100 countries, and sells products under the Reveal® and Energy Smart® consumer brands, and Evolve™, GTx, Immersion™, Infusion™, Lumination™ and Tetra® commercial brands, all trademarks of GE. General Electric (NYSE: GE) works on things that matter to build a world that works better.