The owner of Galaxy Lanes says his building came to life after participating in Thunder Bay Hydro’s Retrofit program.
“Saving energy is an awesome thing, but the big bonus for me is the latest technology in lighting is way brighter,” said Ted Ciotucha Thursday at the 2013 Retrofit Excellence in Energy Efficiency and Conservation Awards.
Ciotucha was one of four local business owners awarded for participating in the Retrofit program.
The Davinci Centre’s Tony Barile, Mascarin Collision and Auto Care Centre’s Gino Mascarin and Ansanual Habib of McKellar Place were also recognized.
Through the Retrofit program, Ciotucha replaced old lighting with new efficient lighting; the program covered 30 per cent of the costs and it’s estimated to save his business 17 per cent in annual energy consumption.
He said while saving energy is great, he expects customer satisfaction to be the real reward.
He’s immediately heard positive comments from customers about the lighting change.
“You can feel comfortable knowing it’s a bright, professional looking place,” Ciotucha said.
Thunder Bay Hydro’s vice president of customer service and conservation Tim Wilson said with the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Awards, they wanted to recognize some of their customers who reached far into their businesses to grab as much savings as possible.
The Retrofit program has been successful for the past seven years and Wilson said they’ve paid out about $500,000 in customer incentives.
“We’ve had 150 local businesses participate in it to the savings of about 1 million kilowatt hours, enough to power 1,000 homes,” Wilson said.
He added he hopes more businesses will take advantage of the program.
“They do have the opportunity to realistically sit down and see a relatively short timeframe to break even on projects like this,” he said.
“The energy savings, they do pay back.”
