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Power To Save: Bright Benefits for Gerrity’s

SCRANTON — Shoppers visiting Gerrity’s Supermarket on Meadow Avenue in Scranton this week may have noticed something a little bit different. “...
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SCRANTON -- Shoppers visiting Gerrity's Supermarket on Meadow Avenue in Scranton this week may have noticed something a little bit different.

"It`s a lot brighter and we've been getting a lot of comments from customers, they don`t know what it is but they're like, `the store seems so much nicer, and brighter, and everything looks better,'" said Gerrity's owner Joe Fasula.

The subtle change in lighting came following a big undertaking, converting six stores to all LED lighting. This store's manager, Jack Archer, hopes for some immediate benefits.

"When it`s lighter it looks fresher, it looks newer, it has buy appeal, and that`s what we`re looking for in the new lighting," Archer said.

Fasula wants a more long-term benefit: that the $80,000 investment will eventually pay for itself in energy savings.

"Every couple of years a new lighting company will come to me and say, `is it time to do this?` I`ll look at the cost and say, `not quite yet.'  It used to be a five-year return on investment, it used to take five years to get the energy savings to pay for them. Now it`s down to two and a half years," Fasula added.

There are about 700 bulbs in each of the six stores that need to be replaced, and it`s not just the overhead lighting.  It`s also every bulb in every refrigerated case.

The transition isn't quite complete at the Meadow Avenue store. Gerrity's said along with a different kind of light, the new bulbs are also plastic. Therefore, safer to have hanging over food.

Then there's the big number: saving about 500,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity.

"That is the equivalent of 74 cars being taken off the road, and that is the equivalent of about 775,000 tons of carbon monoxide," Fasula said.

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