Lighting upgrades save school district $130,000

Based in Hillsborough Country, NH, Milford School District educates 2,100 pre-school through high school students within its five school facilities.

They’re focused on providing quality education that challenges all their students to succeed. At the same time, they recognize the importance of maintaining a safe and healthy environment for students, staff and community, and utilize a comprehensive maintenance program to enhance and improve the district facilities.

Improving the learning environment

Milford School District partnered with Centrica Business Solutions to upgrade interior and exterior lighting across their schools – replacing almost 5,500 inefficient fluorescent lights with high quality LED lighting.

Lighting plays an important role in achieving a comfortable learning environment. It also represents a significant proportion of the schools’ energy consumption. Multiple studies have shown that optimized lighting dramatically improves productivity, reduces fatigue, increases activity and boosts morale.

In addition to replacing all interior lights across the district, two schools had lighting replacements in their parking lots. Additional upgrades were also made to their football field, which was enhanced with nine different lighting settings, including a paparazzi effect, to provide additional enjoyment to students.

Cost neutral results

By upgrading their lighting system to LED, Milford School District reduced their annual energy costs by $130,000. In addition, the cost to maintain and operate the lighting systems also reduced dramatically, as the efficiency and extremely long lifespan of the LEDs means they need to be replaced less often.

These cost savings were used to fund the upgrades through a financing agreement. This meant the project was cost neutral and the school district could receive the improvements needed while valuable tax dollars could continue to be focused on areas that directly impact students’ education.

Bill Cooper, Director of Facilities at Milford School District, said: “Centrica Business Solutions really listened to what we had to say. They wanted to know exactly what we were looking for. We couldn’t ask for better people to come in. Everyone I talk to on my staff had nothing but good things to say about Centrica Business Solutions.”