Supermarket chain slashes costs with new lighting

Texas-based United Supermarkets, LLC, has retrofitted low- and medium-temperature refrigerated display cases in all of its 47 stores with a GE ecomagination product – a light-emitting diode (LED) solution from Lumination, a GE Consumer & Industrial business.

The Lumination LED Refrigerated Display Lighting solution replaces United SupermarketÂ’s traditional fluorescent lamps. In all, United retrofitted more than 3,600 doors in its reach-in door merchandisers with the GE LED solution.

United expects to save more than $633,000 annually in energy and maintenance savings ($369,000 in energy savings and $264,000 in maintenance savings).

“Lowering our energy costs is very important to us,” says Michael Molina, vice president of facilities and design at United Supermarkets. “The LED retrofit in our refrigerated coolers is providing significant energy savings.”

The expected payback is 1.8 years through energy savings and many years of virtually maintenance-free service with a rated life of up to 50,000 hours. The LEDs also provide uniform color and up to three times the light-level uniformity of fluorescent lamps.

The GE LEDs can be turned off at night without any adverse effect on performance or lifetime. For United Supermarkets, that capability means it has reduced the total hours of operation for the lighting in its refrigerated coolers from 24 hours each day with fluorescent lamps to 16 hours per day with LEDs.

The combined environmental impact of the 47-store retrofit represents an annual 2.9-million pound reduction of carbon dioxide emissions. It also equals the good that comes from planting more than 364 acres of trees or removing about 257 cars from the road for every year the LED lighting operates in place of fluorescent lighting.