Outdoor lighting. John Steinbeck once called it “perpetual moonlight,” and Johnson State College will for the foreseeable future be bathed beneath the artificial glow of a new brand of perpetual moonlight shed from LED lighting fixtures, the result of a campus-wide retrofit to all the pole-mounted lights on campus.

The project, which began the second week of March and is expected to be completed by the end of the month, is ushering in a more efficiently illuminated energy future.

The changeover is expected to save JSC 122,000 kilowatts per year, enough to provide light to 10 average homes for 12 months, according to Sharron Scott, dean of administration.”We are always seeking opportunities to reduce our carbon footprint, energy consumption, and costs,” said Scott.

The $84,000 price tag for the project will be tempered by a $28,000 rebate from Efficiency Vermont. “The remainder of the project is funded as part of the Green Revolving Fund,” said Scott.”This fund is for energy reduction projects that have a payback of less than five years.”

The Green Revolving Fund was initiated in 2011, and is a novel funding mechanism which provides member schools with the capital required to complete energy-saving improvements. Once those savings are realized, funds are then syphoned off and paid back into the Green Revolving Fund for other member schools to use.

Over a dozen Vermont schools have signed on to the program, including JSC.

“Total funding for the project at JSC from the Green Revolving Fund is approximately $56,000, which will be paid back over three years,” said Scott.

Lamberton Electric of Montpelier received the contract and is performing all the upgrades. It won the bid in part according to Scott because it was equipped to complete the task in wintertime. “Due to the size of the project, we used a modified bidding process in which three contractors on the VSC (Vermont State College) Preferred Vendor List were approached to offer a bid,” said Scott. “Lamberton’s was the best bid we received.”

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