American Green Lights
Case Study:
Church of Saints Peter and Paul
Chicago, IL.
BEFORE
Saints Peter and Paul Catholic Church is
a beautiful and historic sanctuary with iconic architectural
features and designs. The original lighting fixtures were
tremendous energy hogs, consuming huge amounts of
electricity and generating lots of heat. The Metal Halide
uplights and Compact Fluorescent dome light feature of the
fixtures needed constant lamp replacments and maintenance.
The high mounting height made maintenance a tremendous
safety issue since traditional lifts and scaffolding were difficult
to use in the facility. Also, as metal halide degrades, the color
of the light also shifts to green and orange that detracts from
the ambiance inside the church.
Pastor; Fr Ismael Sandoval-Manzo, decided that he had
enough of the poor lighting for his parishioners’ religious
services, dangerous working conditions for his maintenance
team and outrageously high energy bills. With guidance from
District Operations Director; Adolfo Benages, from the Archdiocese
of Chicago, they contacted Pete Hess of Hartmann
Electric in Elk Grove Village who immediately provided the
ideal solution: American Green Lights Versafit custom LED
retrofit kits. Considering similar architectural LED fixtures
were over $3,000 each, the Versafit is less than 17% of the
cost of a new fixture. The team of American Green Lights
of San Diego, CA together with Crescent Electric had
performed several other high watt, high intensity discharge
upgrades to LED in similar settings with unprecedented
success in light output increase, reduction in electricity and the
elimination of the high heat lamp emissions. Taking advantage
of the hefty ComEd rebate to convert to LED helped
ease the initial financial burden of this daunting endeavor.
The collective team of American Green Lights, Crescent and
Hartmann pursued the challenge in high heat temperatures at
the plus forty-foot elevated ceiling level with demanding,
precise workmanship. At the end of the day, the effort
matched the benefits. American Green Lights’ unique LED
retrofit solution, VersaFit, reduced wattage per fixture from
the existing 1030 Metal Halide / CFL watts per fixture to 280
LED watts per fixture. Despite the 750 watts (73%) reduction
in wattage, the light output increased from the existing almost
dark five to eight foot-candle range to the missalette readable
mid-20 range. Besides doing what’s right for the environment,
St Peter & Paul received a ComEd rebate totaling 75% of the
cost of materials; a fitting reward for doing the right thing!
No longer does Fr. Ismael worry about his team scaling forty
feet for repetitive lamp repairs or the cost associated with
those repairs. His five year / 50,000 hour warranty now works
for him and gives him comfort.
Father Ismael summed it up best when asked if all the time,
money, temporary disruptions were worth the effort:
“We received many, many positive thank you comments
from our parishioners, which makes me very happy.
When my parishioners are happy, I’m happy”.
Could he have expressed himself any better? Upgrade your
facility now with a Custom made VersaFit Retrofit Kit from
American Green Lights.
AFTER