With nearly 30 locations in the greater Boston area, this project is one of the largest sustainability initiatives in the local health and fitness marketplace.
May 11, 2016
Crisp, clean and bright, BSC’s adoption of ThinkLite LED shines
With nearly thirty locations in and around Boston, Boston Sports Clubs (BSC) has established itself as the area’s leading provider of health and fitness. “With a seven day a week schedule and long run hours every day, Boston Sports Clubs uses a significant amount of electricity,” said Leanne Gordon of World Energy Efficiency Services, the energy efficiency consultants for BSC.
“When we embarked on an energy efficient lighting program, we turned to ThinkLite. They are a local company, very responsive and have a range of LED retrofit solutions that work consistently well in a health club environment, without requiring us to replace the fixtures. We only replace the lamps, which makes the solution very easy to install and provides the facility with a quick payback.”
The first BSC location selected for the lighting retrofit was the 22,000 square foot facility at the Prudential Center in Boston.
“T8 fluorescents were predominant and we were able to use ThinkLite’s 18 watt four foot and 12 watt three foot T8 replacement tubes to provide better light at less than half the wattage,” said Gordon. “The BSC project also called for ThinkLite’s exclusive T8 LED tubes with a built-in emergency battery backup. This allowed emergency fluorescent fixtures to be easily retrofitted within minutes, by simply bypassing the emergency ballasts and connecting the ThinkLite Emergency Tube directly in the same fixture.”
Color in this facility has a huge impact, and Gordon stressed that it wasn’t just energy savings but light quality that led to choosing ThinkLite: “With ThinkLite’s driverless technology, we get much better light quality than traditional fluorescent lamps and fixtures.”
Upon completion of the Prudential Center BSC retrofit, World Energy embarked on a broader program to bring ThinkLite to nine more club locations.
“The opportunity to roll ThinkLite out to additional locations dramatically multiplied the savings across the sites,” said Gordon. “And since ThinkLite is the manufacturer, we are able to specify unique products. We actually specified a lamp with a blue hue for the spin studios and ThinkLite delivered.”
Each BSC location has features that are common across sites as well as unique features.
“Our goal was to provide perfect consistency and quality lighting that reinforces their brand across all locations,” said Dinesh Wadhwani, ThinkLite CEO. “This is one of the driving differentiators of ThinkLite. We can literally design a look that can be uniformly applied over many sites. This is a key part of our value proposition, made clear at BSC and World Energy projects with other fitness chains such as Healthtrax.”
ThinkLite’s superior LED products employ a proprietary driverless technology that produces 90% less heat than traditional LED lamps with internal or external drivers. Coupled with an optimized heat dissipation system, ThinkLite lamps produce an industry leading 131 lumens per watt. This makes ThinkLite the first LED lamp to achieve the light levels equal to that of a brand new fluorescent while reducing 60% of the energy, and a 65,000-hour lifespan.
The BSC retrofit qualified for a 70% cash incentive rebate from Eversource.
“When you combine a high quality product like ThinkLite, a reduction in energy consumption by over 50% and significant rebates from Eversource, you really have a terrific outcome.” said Kim Schwickrath, BSC Director of Facilities. “Staff and members have commented on the even qualities of the light. Everything looks bright and full of energy, perfect for our clubs.”