Monday, April 7, 2008

Groom Energy helps EMC save lighting dollars

By Efrain Viscarolasaga

More than a few tech startups boast of starting in garages. Groom Energy Solutions is hoping to stay inside them.

The Salem-based company, an energy-efficiency consulting firm spun out of Salem-based building contractor Groom Construction Co. Inc., has developed and launched its first product, a fluorescent-lighting retrofit kit aimed at making lighting more efficient in "always on" environments, such as parking garages. After a trial installation at EMC Corp.'s Hopkinton garage, the networked storage vendor is expanding its deployment to an additional garage on its campus.

Called the GES Hybrid, executives say the kit can reduce the power usage of 24/7 lighting systems by 50 percent. The first system was installed in a 1,000-space parking garage at EMC's Hopkinton campus in January, and officials were impressed enough to expand the program to an additional garage.

While officials at EMC said that they plan to review the installation for a year before providing any tangible numbers on the project, EMC senior director of North American facilities Paul Fitzgerald called the results "remarkable."

Groom's new product is a combination of off-the-shelf tech and a new way at looking at the lighting system as a whole, said Fritz Troller, vice president at the 12-person Groom Energy. The system uses a basic compact fluorescent lamp (CFL) with new configurations for the ballast and reflectors in the units, which spread the light over a greater space rather than focusing it straight down. The firm has applied for a patent on the kit, hoping it can be a major part of its intellectual property portfolio.

Installation at the EMC facility was done over the course of a weekend and required no drilling or other significant modifications to the structure. But no matter how unique or simple Groom's technology is, Fitzgerald said the product would not have received even a look if it hadn't been economically viable. "We are very focused on looking at the cost -- the ROI -- first on every (sustainability) project," the EMC executive said.

That ROI varies from site to site, said Troller, but a typical retrofitted fixture, at a power cost of 15 cents per kilowatt hour, can save $160 per year. The fixtures pay for themselves in under one year, said Troller. EMC officials would not disclose the total cost of the project.