Small Business Lighting Program

Small Business Lighting Program, which was also called BLITZ when the program started in 2009, is one of the most successful initiatives taken by Ontario Power Authority (now IESO) to bring down total kWh and KW during peak hours in Ontario.

Under this program, Small Business owners with Hydro Bills under 50KW were getting up to $1500 worth of FREE lighting upgrades. We helped the customers to change old fixtures with magnetic ballasts and T12 lamps to more energy efficient electronic ballasts and T8 lamps. Now the same electronic ballasts can power the LED lamps and further save energy. LEDs also replaced old incandescent and halogen lights, bringing down the power consumption by over 70%, keeping the same brightness and lighting intensity level.

We handled a list of over 30,000 customers in the GTA and they were very happy to have these lights replaced as it improved the overall ambience of their stores and office and also brought the Hydro bills down. We maintained excellent quality in installations work; high ethical and professional management standards in conducting site assessment that kept customers and LDCs (Hydro Companies) happy.

We were one of the few Service Providers under the program that successfully enrolled large number of bulk accounts to reduce their KW and kWh. This also included some of the high-end Hospitality Sector properties like Fairmont Royal York, Sheraton Centre, Hyatt Regency, Holiday Inn, Radisson and International Plaza Hotel covering all their Stores and Office Towers. Many high-rise office towers, property management companies and medical buildings were also enrolled besides achieving a very high productivity from the small business units on the streets.

We maintained excellent personal relations with all the 3 LDCs we worked during the 6 years of the program passing all QA/QC tests by Hydro/Nedco and ESA inspections. We also maintained our own in-house Call Centre to set-up appointments for Assessors, did follow up calls to check the quality of marksmanship of electricians and attended promptly after-sale service and warranty related calls. We developed a product-training program to educate the Field Lighting Auditors and Electricians. Good technical product knowledge always helped raise the confidence level of our team dealing in this program and also offer better service to the customers. We also have professional engineers in our staff.

It has been an exciting experience dealing with the LDCs and working under this program. We have many success stories to share that is making a difference to the carbon emissions in Ontario. We look forward to the new program starting in 2016.

Some of our completed projects under Small Business Lighting Program