Ken and Ron Mard are partners in Superior Spring & Manufacturing Company, Inc., which was founded more than 83 years ago by their grandfather. The company specializes in providing front-end, brake and suspension/spring repair and service work to tractor-trailers, heavy-duty vehicles, trucks and automobiles at two locations - Hamden, Connecticut, and Cheshire, Massachusetts.

Describing Superior Spring’s Hamden facility, Ken Mard said, “We’ve got nine double-depth repair/service bays where our mechanics can work on two large trucks at the same time. We also have operational bays for our parts department, for wheel balancing and alignment and for diagnostics, inspection and testing.”

In 2003, the brothers decided to upgrade the lighting in these work areas. “We planned to do this eventually,“ Mard said, “But the prospect of getting an immediate UI incentive to offset our costs, plus the savings we would realize by using a more energy-efficient lighting system, made us undertake this project sooner rather than later.”

“They were smart to do so,” said Dennis O’Connor who administers UI’s Small Business Energy Advantage Program. “Lighting burns up energy and energy dollars, and we estimate it can account for 20-35% of a business’s total energy use.”

Superior Spring hired Sound Energy Lighting of New Haven, a UI-approved vendor, to do the update. “Quite honestly,” Sound Energy Owner Tom Leonard said,” it was pretty dingy in those areas, kind of like the dim yellow lighting you have driving through a tunnel.”

The $10,315 upgrade involved a fixture-by-fixture replacement of 65 outmoded mercury vapor high-base 250W floodlights with 175W metal halide pulse start lamps. The new lights have an acrylic reflector on the top and bottom and all around the sides to cast light in all directions.

“The lower wattage pulse start metal halides use less energy to give off the same the amount of light Superior Spring got from its lighting,” Leonard said. “And it’s white light, not yellowish, that makes it easier for the mechanics and other employees to see what they are doing.”

According to O’Connor, Superior Spring can expect annual energy savings of 20,132 kWh. “The dollar equivalent, $2,700 a year,” he said, “equates to an eleven month payback, taking into account the $8,570 payment this customer received under our small business incentive plan.”

UI’s program has another appealing feature - financing the outstanding project cost balance with an up to two-year, interest-free loan. “The Mards took out an eleven month zero-interest loan, which interestingly is the same term as their anticipated payback,” O’Connor said. “The $214.85 monthly loan payoff is conveniently added to their electric bill.”

When you listen to Ken Mard recite, almost as a formula, about how increased lighting efficiency results in decreased energy, and then realize how the incentive and other benefits of UI’s Small Business program, its easy to see why Superior Spring is such a successful third generation family enterprise.

Contact:
Dennis O’Connor (203) 499-3715