Walmart Canada Retrofits Overhead Sales Floor Lighting to LED

Walmart Canada today announced a first-of-its-kind sales floor LED lighting retrofit. The retailer has retrofitted all of the overhead sales floor lighting at its Brampton North (located at Highway 10 and Bovaird Road in Brampton, Ontario) supercentre from conventional fluorescent lighting to high efficiency LED 4-foot retrofit lamps. The retailer estimates this small change could save approximately 283,000 kilo-watt hours (kWh) per year, which will results in a savings of up to $26,000 per year.

"We're very proud to be the first large Canadian retailer to fully convert sales floor lighting to LED for general illumination requirements," said Ken Farrell, vice president of store development for Walmart Canada. "This latest project represents just one of many steps Walmart Canada is taking to make our stores less energy intensive."

Completed by Canadian EcoLight LED Systems Corp., the retrofit involved changing close to 6,000 lamps from traditional 25-watt fluorescent high efficiency lamps to 18-watt LED lights, allowing the retailer to reduce energy usage for store lighting by 28 per cent, thereby reducing the strain on the energy grid. In addition to the direct savings from switching to LED lamps, the retailer will also benefit from reduced costs for air conditioning requirements, relamping, reballasting and recycling, and an improved shopping environment.

"Unlike traditional fluorescent lights, LED lights emit less heat, which allows us to reduce our air condition use at the store during the spring and summer," explained Farrell. "The new lights also provide a better shopping environment for our customers. Customers shopping at the Brampton North location will notice the store appears much brighter and with lighting that is closer to natural daylight, almost as if we'd installed skylights around the store."

Fast facts about sustainability at Walmart Canada

• The company operates an annual reduced summer lighting program in nearly all of its stores nationwide. In 2012, by reducing its sales floor lighting by one-third, summer-long, the company saved $1.5 million by avoiding an estimated 18.9 million kWh of energy consumption, which is the energy consumed annually by approximately 1,900 Canadian homes.
• In addition to reducing its lighting during the summer months, Walmart Canada has changed nearly all of its 1.75 million 32-watt lamps to lower wattage 25-watt lamps as replacements are needed. In 2009, the company began rolling out prototypical stores across Canada that are at least 30 per cent more energy-efficient than previous store prototypes.
• Where possible, the company is retrofitting existing stores to be at least 20 per cent more energy efficient. This project involves lighting improvements and re-commissioning mechanical systems including heating, air conditioning and refrigeration.
• The company recently opened one of the world's most sustainable fresh food distribution centres in Balzac, Alberta, which includes wind and solar power, and is piloting geothermal technology at its environmental demonstration store in Burlington, Ontario.
• In addition to the wind-power pilot at the Balzac Fresh Food Distribution Centre, the company operates a 20-killowatt wind turbine adjacent to its Milton, Ontario store. The turbine is expected to generate as much as 38,000 to 45,000 kilo-watt hours (kWh) of electricity per year based on wind yield. The wind turbine has been designed for low wind speed areas, where wind power has not been previously practical, and can operate in wind speeds as low as 10 kilometres per hour.
• The company is piloting a rooftop solar power-generating system estimated to generate over 380,000 kilo-watt hours (kWh) of energy per year, enough to supply 35 Canadian households, on top of its Kitchener-Waterloo store.
  Walmart Canada is one of the country's largest purchasers of renewable energy through Bullfrog Powe.