James Fisher walked through the warehouse of a food broker outside Washington DC and carefully noted the lighting in use of the 250,000 square-foot facility. At the conclusion of the lighting audit, Fisher plugged some numbers into his spreadsheet. He looked at the facilities manager and said, “I can save you $96,771 on lighting per year and the life of the lights are over 28 years.” The project is under consideration.
Fisher is passionate about saving his customers money and helping to save the environment. “We live in the Chesapeake Watershed, an area that we all prize,” he said. “I want to help people save energy so additional (and expensive) power plants don’t have to be built. Saving on energy makes us all winners.”
LED Specialists
Fisher’s company, Atlantic Lighting Solutions, specializes in providing LED lights for businesses. The more energy a firm uses, the more money he can save them. For example, he can provide lights that will last for 125,000 hours or more, not require the ballast and save a customer 50% or more on the cost of energy on lighting. In addition to the savings, the client can get a rebate from the state of Maryland. Fisher will also take care of the disposal of the old lights in a legal and environmentally friendly manner.
Fisher became interested in the lighting field more than 30 years ago. As a custom home builder, construction manager and as a facility manager, lighting was an issue. When he became the vice president of Dart Drug Stores, a Washington DC firm with 100 stores, the topic became of even greater interest to him. The store was a stand-alone drug store or combination drug store, hardware store and lumber store. He noticed that he had to change every light bulb in the store within two years.
He thought, “There’s got to be a better way.”
Environmentally Friendly
Today, there is. The LED light bulbs are environmentally friendly and have huge cost savings for the store owners. Currently, some regular fluorescent bulbs and ballast cannot be manufactured or imported into the US. So, the ones being purchased are in stock and are going to become increasingly scarce, therefore more expensive. Everyone will soon be forced to look at LED.
“I offer a turnkey package to my customers,” said Fisher. “I get them to tell me about their lighting problems, then provide an energy audit. The thoroughness of the audit will help the customer easily to make decisions on how and where he can save money on his lights.”
Atlantic Lighting Solutions is affiliated with MidAmerica Green Building Alliance based in Annapolis, MD. MAGBA is member-driven, business to business network, with operations in
