By Anna Skinner
Electricity can get expensive, but Carrie Granitto, commercial sales manager of Westfield Lighting, 3440 Ind. 32, says Duke Energy has lots of incentives to help people save.
“They give energy saving offers and a lot of times will send free lightbulbs that are energy efficient,” Granitto said.
Duke Energy also makes house calls.
“They have a home energy house call. They will come out to your house and tell you all the things you can save energy on,” Granitto said. “Power management can help home owners take care of things in their house and reduce energy costs.”
Granitto says the Duke incentives can help make Westfield become “clean, lean and green.” She also goes out to the businesses in Westfield and can offer rebates on if they switch to LED lighting.
“I will go in and take a look at what (lighting) was in there and what the incentive would be to change it,” she said. “As soon as it’s installed, an inspector comes out and writes the business a check as long as they have everything in place.”
Although LED bulbs may cost more upfront, they help with overall energy savings. A 6-watt LED bulb provides the same brightness that a 60 watt incandescent bulb provides.
“Most of your energy on incandescent bulbs is being extracted as heat, so you’ve created an environment that gets hotter and hotter and hotter,” she said. “That’s wasted energy.”
Another plus of LED bulbs is they do not contain any mercury and don’t give off UV rays, which is healthier for the environment.
Granitto said she hopes that Westfield can improve its energy usage.
“We keep using more and more fossil fuels, and it’s a hardship on our ecological arena here. We have to start using less and less energy, but we want to do that and not use any of our necessities or the things we want to have,” she said. “The technology today is making that very easy to do. I want to get it out how important it is. We have that available here. We can teach people here.”
For more on how to save, visit Westfield Lighting or email Granitto at [email protected].
