After upgrading his walk-in coolers and replacing indoor lighting, Jeremy Hosier, the manager of Westmere Beverage in Guilderland started to see benefits even before looking at his monthly electric bill.

“We replaced old lighting in the walk-in coolers with LEDs.  This produced a clean, pure light.  Customers loved it - the 12-packs gleam like starships and people just want to buy them,” Hosier said, adding, “our business went up despite industry trends that were going down.”

Westmere Beverage participated in National Grid’s Small Business program that covered 70% of the costs to upgrade two walk-in coolers with new LED lighting, install an easy-to-use control system that monitors and adjusts moisture and temperature, and lighting retrofits that included new fluorescent light ballasts and bulbs.

The reduced utility costs mean all these upgrades are “basically free” – getting back all costs in the first 10 months – “and then a moneymaker, working to build my business and move more to the bottom line,” said Hosier.

“Most of the changes we made focused on getting rid of energy waste - basically not running things when they didn’t need to be on,” he added. That, coupled with the lighting upgrades cut $300 per month off the energy bill – approximately two-thirds of the savings coming from the refrigeration upgrade and one-third from the lighting changes.

 In addition to the National Grid program, Westmere Beverage has taken additional steps to reduce energy waste.   Hosier acknowledges that some of these actions individually may not move the needle, but taken together start making a difference.  Some of these smaller steps include using a lighting sensor so the outdoor lighting goes on and off automatically, turning off soda coolers when the store is closed, and relocating a compressor to boost operating efficiency.

“Keeping the lights on and the beer cold requires lots of energy.  The power bill is the biggest part of my overhead so we’re trying to be more efficient wherever we can.” Hosier said.