PCMC earns environmental award

By cutting its electric power usage through a major retrofit in four Green Bay area facilities, Paper Converting Machine Company has earned the Environmental Stewardship Award from Orion Energy Systems.

The change to high-intensity fluorescent lighting from Orion reduced PCMC’s electric power consumption by about 1,167,360 kilowatt-hours (kWh) per year. According to accepted formulas, a reduction this size means that each year about 22,763 tons of carbon dioxide, 310 tons of carbon, five tons of sulfur dioxide and 2.4 tons of nitrogen oxides—all of them greenhouse gas pollutants—will not enter the local atmosphere.

The reduction is the air-scrubbing equivalent of removing 189 cars from the road permanently or planting a 214-acre forest. It is also the conservation equivalent of saving 96,367 gallons of gasoline. The change is expected to save PCMC $85,774 at present electric rates.

Tom Nelson, PCMC facilities service manager, told how the project happened. “We were visiting one of our new owner’s (Marquip Ward United) facilities and they had the Orion lights. They hooked us up with Pete Wood from Orion and also with LightSource Distributing of Custer, who handled the installation. Even before this, though, we knew we had to do something with the lighting in all our plants because it was terrible lighting. So we had them bring in some lights and we hung them up, had a trial, and we visited another location that had them in there. In the end, Orion and LightSource did all four plants.”

PCMC replaced a total of 1,369 lights in the four facilities, a mixture 400W and 1000W High Intensity Discharge types and some older style fluorescents with the HIF fixtures from Orion.

As a result, the amount of power PCMC uses for lighting fell from 2,018,318 kWh per year to 850,958, resulting in a 1,167,360kWh saving of about 60 percent. The move is expected to save a total of $85,774 per year at present rates.

Nelson said the lights had been extremely well-received. “They’re excellent,” he said, “Not one complaint about the lights from the workers. We’re very happy and very impressed with them.”

Orion Energy Systems presents these awards as a way to call attention to companies that achieve significant environmental results through use of Orion lighting. The award came as something of a surprise to Nelson. “It’s nice to be recognized for saving energy and cutting pollution and saving on hazardous waste handling; those HID bulbs are a big expense in that regard. Plus, PCMC tries to be an environmental friend whenever we can.”

“Energy efficiency isn’t a zero-sum thing,” commented Orion Business development director Mike Ontrop. “We’re all winners here—Paper Converting Machine Company because they saved money and energy, LightSource, and GLT because our products were used. And we all benefit from the environmental effects of using less power.”

“But the fact that a 1,167,360 kWh chunk of power came off the grid benefits all of us in a different way. This tends to lessen upward pressure on power prices, and that’s an issue we’re all facing. We congratulate Paper Converting Machine Company on this many-faceted accomplishment.”