Tribune/Debra Reid - City electrician Wayne Yount shows one of the fluorescent light bulbs installed on a trial basis in downtown Sparks. The more efficient 68-watt bulbs could replace old 250-watt sodium vapor street lights, Yount said.
“It is the gift that keeps on giving,” said Pete Etchart, Spark’s deputy public works director and city engineer.
According to Etchart, the city is planning to use the money to swap out existing lighting for more energy-efficient alternatives in all of its public parking garages and many of its city buildings. Eventually, Etchart said he hopes the energy savings will pay for themselves, creating a revolving energy fund for future green projects.
The immediate projects include a Police Department lighting retrofit project and replacing street lights with LED (Light Emitting Diode) bulbs.
Another $4 million is also on the city’s funding wish list for energy conservation projects, coming from an Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block grant.
But, the city is guaranteed the $840,000, Etchart said, through stimulus funds.
According to the city’s application for the federal funds, all of the hoped-for savings would be used exclusively for energy efficiency and conservation.
“Instead of reducing the appropriate budget item after an energy efficiency or renewable energy generation project is completed, a portion or the entire savings would be put into the (fund) to help fund additional energy efficiency/renewable energy generation projects,” the city stated in its stimulus funds application.
According to Etchart, the city is hoping to save money by reducing its power bill. And according to representatives from NV Energy, electric costs are the biggest item on that bill. City reports showed a more than $4.6 million bill for annual electric costs. Natural gas charges tack another $262,000 onto Sparks’ annual energy costs.
According to Karl Walquist, a spokesman for NV Energy, the city of Sparks is one of the top 20 energy users in northern Nevada, mostly because of the electricity used by the city-managed Truckee Meadows Water Reclamation Facility.
“The goal is to become less dependent on rising energy costs,” Etchart said.
According to a presentation Etchart prepared for the Sparks City Council, city electric costs rose more than 23 percent between 2004 and 2008. The natural gas costs rose about 40 percent. However, Etchart added that the city’s energy consumption has gone down in the past year.
“It might be people turning their computers off or because we have less employees,” Etchart said.
Walquist added that the city reduced its energy usage by 1,442,647 kilowatt hours last year.
“That’s equivalent to reducing carbon emissions by 1,081 tons or removing 180 cars from the road,” Walquist said. “It’s also equivalent to the amount of electricity required to serve 160 homes in northern Nevada for a year.”
Neither the federal grant request not Etchart gave specifics on how much money the city could save by swapping out the light bulbs and implementing a list of other energy-saving projects.
Rather, both sources said the coming year would be an information-gathering period involving energy audits and a professional evaluation of the city’s energy usage.
However, in the application for federal stimulus funds, the city reported the hoped-for annual energy savings.
“Upon the completion of the proposed Energy Efficiency Implementation Projects, the city of Sparks anticipates annual energy savings of approximately 139,851 kWh (kilowatt hours) and 4,700 natural gas therms,” the report stated. “This equates to greenhouse gas emission reductions of approximately208,380 lbs (CO2 equivalents).”
According to Energy Star, a joint program of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Energy, switching from incandescent light bulbs to CFL (Compact Florescent Light Bulbs) would save the average homeowner about $77 per year, assuming that the light is on for five hours per day. Switching to LED lights, assuming the same hours of use, would save about $94 per year.
The plan to reduce power means using the federal stimulus money to buy energy-efficient lighting for the city’s parking garages as well as replacing all the city’s traffic lights with LED bulbs.
“You will notice that fewer street lights are burning out,” Etchart said, adding that the former street lights used regular incandescent bulbs.
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